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THE LIFE EFFICIENT 

CHINA INSIDE OUT 

PROWLING ABOUT PANAMA 



Missionary Morale 



By 

GEORGE A. MILLER 




THE METHODIST BOOK CONCERN 
NEW YORK CINCINNATI 



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Copyright, 1920, by 
GEORGE A. MILLER 



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CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

Foreword 9 

I. The Man Behind the Pro- 
grams 11 

Invincible Men— World Plans — 
A New Hope — The Search 
for Effective Men— The Task 
of the Church — The Sources 
of Morale. 

II. Morale and Life 19 

Morale of the Disciples — The 
Missionary as a Man — Vic- 
tory through Quality. 

III. Paganism and Fanaticism... . 25 

Hating Heathenism — Pagan 
Morale — Proclaim the Better 
Way — Fanaticism — Social 
Expectation — Unbalanced 
Personality. 

IV. Soldiers, Athletes, and Ex- 

plorers 35 

Morale of the Athlete— The 
Explorers. 

5 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

V. John and Paul 40 

John the Apostle — Utter Cer- 
tainty of Spiritual Things — 
Paul — Elements of Back- 
ground — "An Original Expe- 
rience of Christ' ' — Personal 
Identity with Christ — Sense 
of the Unseen — Christ for the 
World— It Takes Time. 

VI. The Call and the Task 50 

Why Does a Missionary Go? 
— 1. Romance — 2. Travel — 

3. The Personal Touch— 

4. Fruitful Life Investment — 

5. A Direct Call— The Best 
Missionaries. 

VII. The Missionary in the Mak- 
ing 57 

What ShaU the Candidate Do? 
—What Is Candidate Mo- 
rale? — The Gift That is 
Within — Five Essentials to 
Success. 

VIII. The Few Who are Chosen . . 65 
The Many Called— What Makes 
the Missionary — Sense of 
Humor — Enemies of Morale. 

IX. Artificial Morale 74 

Propaganda Methods — Staying 
Power — Organized Facts — 
Morale and Life Results. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PA ^ 

X. The Foundation of Faith . . 81 
The Foundation— Faith in the 
Unseen — A Personal Faith — 
Fear and Love. 

XI. Discipune and Drudgery. . . 87 

Majors and Minors — Duplex 
Efficiency— Bridging the Gap 
— Personality — Sacrifice and 
Discipline— Three Disciplines 
— Formalities — Previous At- 
tainments — Final Deyote- 
ment of Whole Personality— 
The Missionary and His 
Reading — Unique Opportu- 
nities—The Silent Death- 
Tragic Miss-Fits. 

XII. The Home Church 103 

Home Backing Multiplies— Sec- 
ond-Term Success — Perni- 
cious Correspondents — Tell 
the Truth— Getting the Facts 
to the Home Church — Pub- 
licity — Emotional Appeals. 

XIII. Missionary Administration. 114 

Contact with the Office— 1. The 
Unified Command — 2. The 
Whole Objective — 3. The 
Specific Task— 4. The Stand- 
ardized Organization. 
7 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

XIV. The Mission Family 124 

Living in Close Quarters — A 
Missionary's Recreation — 
Readjusting Social Standards 
— Contract Teachers — Un- 
married Women — A Working 
Sense of Humor — Social 
Graces — The Wider Fellow- 
ships 

XV. Public Service 135 

A Missionary's Influence — Let- 
ting in the Light— The Mis- 
sionary not a Propagandist 
— Dealing with Governments. 

XVI. The Missionary and His 

Mission 143 

Meeting the Constituency — The 
Pioneer — Flowers in the Des- 
ert—The Margin of Reti- 
cence — The Personal Touch 
— Language Problems — Na- 
tive Fellowships — The Art of 
Command — Living as the 
Natives — Native Religions — 
Loving the People — The Vic- 
tory of Morale. 



FOREWORD 

What the morale of the soldier wrought 
in France the spirit of the missionary must 
accomplish everywhere. In the days of no 
equipment the missionary's personality 
largely accounted for his results. Now 
that lands, buildings, machinery, funds, 
and apparatus are being planned and pro- 
vided on a scale beyond all previous un- 
dertakings, there arises the urgent need of 
men and women sufficient for the challenge 
of a new world situation. The cause is 
finally to be lost or won on the basis of its 
working personnel. Where and how shall 
we provide the supermissionary? 



CHAPTER I 

THE MAN BEHIND THE 
PROGRAMS 

It is proposed to recreate a broken world. 
Vast plans are projected and complex or- 
ganizations arise. Before the smoke of 
battle had cleared from the skies of suf- 
fering nations the minds of far-seeing men 
were searching to and fro throughout the 
earth, devising means and measures for re- 
lief and reconstruction. It is now required 
that civilization be rebuilt in a generation. 
Old things must become new and new 
things better. 

Invincible Men 

To clear away the debris of the old order 
and lay foundations for the new earth will 
call for a great company of men and women 
of the highest and most efficient type. Only 
those of finest fiber will be sufficient. For 
such undertakings men must be strong in 
11 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

that fourth dimension that reaches toward 
the infinite and feeds upon heavenly bread 
that the world has overlooked. 

It is the peculiar glory of the gospel that 
it has ever produced invincible men, sus- 
tained by unseen forces and filled by the 
Omnipotent Spirit. Where human reckon- 
ing has failed, the unconquerable man has 
gone through. If he failed to save his life, 
he still could die for the cause. 

We are thinking and planning in terms 
of high potentials and world programs. 
The underlying problem is that of finding 
enough undefeatable men to go out and 
translate the great plans into living ac- 
tualities. We near the margin of a better 
country. Major prophets are pointing the 
way. What we need is enough competent 
guides to keep humanity in step until we 
cross the border of the promised land. 

World Plans 

The sound of the trumpet is in the air. 
Centenaries and New Eras and Jubilees and 
Celebrations and World Programs and In- 
terchurch projects are all about us. For 
the confirmed provincial mind it must be 
12 



MAN BEHIND THE PROGRAMS 

very confusing. We are mounting up on 
the wings of world surveys and race units 
and comity and cooperation and united 
drives and assigned responsibilities. Pro- 
motion and propaganda and publicity and 
payments and prayer; organization and 
operation and conservation and continua- 
tion are recasting our terminology and re- 
assembling our activities. The upheavals 
of a new creation are about us, and we set 
up and revise and reform our committees 
and boards overnight and begin over again 
the next morning with a bigger plan and a 
more determined purpose to challenge the 
last man at home and offer the last man 
everywhere the more abundant life of the 
gospel. It must have been something like 
this when the world was young and the 
continents were remade and shifted into 
place. 

A New Hope 

These great plans bring the thrill of a 
new hope to every seeing soul. It is good 
to live and think in the thoughts of men 
from whose eyes the scales have fallen as 
they have stood on high places and beheld 
13 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

the eternal purposes and then have dared 
to come back and undertake to realize the 
kingdom of God on earth. Xever was such 
a day as this, and never have men and 
women listened to such a call for devote- 
ment of their lives to highest service of 
God and men. Never has there been so 
bright a promise of a hundredfold harvest. 
No seeing soul can think small thoughts 
again. The world is melting in the caul- 
dron. Who is able to shape the mold for 
the new civilization to be cast before our 
eyes? The fires of world events wax hot 
in the furnace of the times. 

Wherefore the need of men, better men, 
bigger men, stronger men, men who can 
stay brave and hold steady longer than 
any men yet assigned tremendous tasks. 
The outcome of the new plans and larger 
measures depends upon the church's power 
to provide men of world horizons and con- 
tinent programs. All plans must inevitably 
settle back to the level of the men who 
must operate them. Only world men can 
actualize world undertakings. Calvary 
would have been but a Jewish-Roman 
execution without a Divine Redeemer to 
14 



MAN BEHIND THE PROGRAMS 

make effective the spiritual potentialities 
of the cross. 

The "higher level of experience and life" 
projected for the church and the new 
social order planned for the world will be 
but idle dreams without men and women 
equal to the tasks of realizing these divine 
visions in daily life and human interests. 
Without the grace of higher effectiveness, 
the most far-flung purposes will yield but 
meager results. 

The Search for Effective Men 

Where and how shall this more effective 
workman be found? What are the secret 
sources of his power and where are the 
hidden springs of his personality? How 
may a man rise above his own best and 
become something better, a reincarnation 
of the undiscourageable purpose in a human 
soul? 

This is our problem. What makes men 
truly able for the business of doing the 
impossible? Who can name that spiritual 
intuition beyond mental alertness, that 
wisdom transcending human judgment, 
that knowledge outside of information, that 
15 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

endurance in excess of human limits, that 
steadfastness that defies torture and 
drudgery and loneliness and death? Who 
can answer these questions holds the key 
to the triumphant kingdom of God on 
earth. 

How comes it that there are men, con- 
scious, not of greatness, but of being able 
for the tasks of every passing day? Whence 
comes the unshaken assurance that all sac- 
rifices are trifling beside the eternal im- 
portance of the Great Cause? Who will 
open our eyes to see the forces that fight 
for us? 

The Task of the Church 

This is the task of the church, to dis- 
cover and develop those sources of effective 
personality that lie beyond classroom di- 
plomas, medical examinations, Binet-Simon 
tests, and the deepest-laid good intentions. 
Failure here means the wrecking of the 
greatest machinery ever devised for world 
redemption. 

Careful training may produce a workman 
meeting every known test, yet later he may 
falter and stumble over the unforeseen di- 
16 



MAN BEHIND THE PROGRAMS 

lemma or the unfamiliar difficulty. The 
tests have high value, but we shall never 
find in any laboratory or examination room 
the measure of a man's resistance under 
complicated pressures, nor the staying 
power that will outlast the persistent op- 
ponent, nor yet the unknown reactions 
amid untried emergencies. There is no 
advance test for a man's "kindling ca- 
pacity" in a new situation. The whole 
issue may depend on the unpremeditated 
act of a man at bay. 

The Sources of Morale 

What we must find is the fountain of 
the spirit. Men under strain will ulti- 
mately do what the inner forces of their 
own natures impel them to do. Training 
is valuable, but the inner nature is de- 
terminative. 

The value of a man's education is finally 
measured by his effective contact with 
humanity. How much does he weigh in 
the scales of life? Granted the fine steel 
of inherent ability, what edge has training 
wrought on his sword? How shall we dis- 
cover and develop characters that will, by 
17 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

force of inner motives, register effectively 
in the difficult tasks and crises of a mis- 
sionary's life? 

To discover the sources of the mission- 
ary's morale and live by them is to achieve 
the victory that overcometh the world. 



18 



CHAPTER II 

MORALE AND LIFE 

The training of the disciples of Jesus 
presented a distinct problem in effective 
morale. Even in the presence of the Great 
Teacher they were slow to develop quali- 
ties fit for founders of the new church. 
Two or three years of intimate association 
with Christ were not enough to produce 
personal stability and moral resistance 
sufficient for the strain of Passion Week. 

Morale of the Disciples 

But ordinary, stumbling, changeable men 
did become shining examples of the highest 
morale. To get the same results to-day 
from similar materials is our responsibility. 
If we ever succeed, we must begin with a 
lot of men capable of denying their Lord, 
and there always will be some who will 
insist on calling down fire from heaven 
upon those who do not agree with them. 
The doubter and the timid and the im- 
19 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

pulsive and the persecutor and the ignorant 
are always with us. 

But something else is also with us. The 
Power that made a fearless prophet from a 
faltering Peter lives and reigns to-day. 
Back of the condensed statements that de- 
scribe the day of Pentecost lay factors of 
preparation and experience out of which 
grew the results of that hour of climax. 
When a faltering Peter becomes the fearless 
prophet of the new kingdom and a perse- 
cuting Saul becomes the most influential 
man of his century, the sources of high- 
power personality have been discovered 
and utilized. Certainly, here lies our 
glorious hope. If the last great assurance 
of Jesus means anything, it means that we 
have "with us alway" "this same Jesus,'' 
and that he is still able to produce men of 
world-winning caliber. Until the promise 
of his presence is withdrawn we have no 
valid reason for discouragement. 

The Missionary as a Man 

Napoleon said that in warfare "the moral 
was to the physical as three to one." 
Enormous advances have been made in 
20 



MORALE AND LIFE 

improvement of the physical condition of 
fighting men, but the men who won the 
war in Europe are agreed that, after all, 
the preponderance of good morale as a 
decisive factor still holds. The body has 
been lifted to higher levels of health, and 
physical "condition" has received close at- 
tention, but the spirit of the men has come 
to such prominence as never before. We 
have learned that in the last analysis it is 
the soul of the man that does the fighting. 

At the ultimate point of contact with fife, 
all missionary work is distinctly personal. 
It is the man himself who counts. The 
missionary has no greater privilege nor re- 
sponsibility than the training of his own 
spirit. It makes a deal of difference 
whether he is half-hearted or whole- 
hearted about his work. He may have 
lost heart altogether, and drag along hope- 
lessly awaiting furlough or retirement. 

It is inevitable that we think much in 
terms of equipment and material values. 
Appropriations, budgets, askings, build- 
ings, installments, interest, subscriptions, 
and collections are well-worn terms in our 
dealings with the work. What we must 
21 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

not forget is the final human factor in 
every missionary undertaking. We must 
have the best machine possible, but we 
must also find the man who can direct the 
machine, and do something that no ma- 
chine can ever do, or we shall achieve only 
machine results. In a locked room of a 
far-away mission school lies an expensive 
set of dust-covered chemical laboratory 
apparatus, useless because there is no one 
to put it to work. A load of brick would 
have been more useful. A Sailors' Home 
in an Oriental port struggled along on 
scant support, but under the administra- 
tion of an earnest man did some useful 
work. A sudden windfall caused inflation 
of plans. The manager was unequal to the 
larger purposes, and the institution was 
ruined and closed its doors. Not too much 
money, but too little man. 

Provide the equipment, the best is not 
good enough. But better equipment means 
the need of still better men to use it effec- 
tively. The modern mission plant, with its 
numerous specialties, will need a specialist 
in getting results, or it may yet become 
little more than a dusty machine shop. 
22 



MORALE AND LIFE 

Victory Through Quality 

If Jesus Christ had waited until he could 
have assembled a host and organized a 
"drive," the Christian Church would be yet 
unborn. Every great moral movement of 
Christian history has been initiated by 
lonely pioneers, who went out, sometimes 
without human chart or compass, but 
always with the vision of the spiritual city 
of God before their eyes. Few they have 
been and often forsaken. It is the tragedy 
of spiritual leadership that it is so lonely. 
Across the dark pages of human ignorance 
and perversity they march in solitary sil- 
houette against the sky. Sometimes they 
falter and stumble, but they rise and fol- 
low in the footsteps of Him whom having 
not seen they love unto the end. 

This thin red line of pioneers is the en- 
tering wedge of the innumerable host that 
always follows in the wake of the spiritual 
explorers of the universe. There always 
will be followers. But how shall they 
follow without a leader, and how shall one 
lead unless he first of all be led from on 
high and filled with the invincible Spirit? 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

A rudder is a very small part of a ship, 
say one unit of ten thousand, but the rud- 
der controls the direction and destination 
of the ten thousand. The moral heralds 
and spiritual light-bearers may not be 
numerous, but they carry torches that 
illuminate the path of life and reveal 
values. And the solitary leaders on the 
far-flung line of march will not travel 
alone. Theirs is the fellowship of the 
prophets and priests and redeemers of 
mankind. Verily it is a goodly company. 
Who follows in their train? 



M 



CHAPTER III 

PAGANISM AND FANATICISM 

Any effective effort to deal with pagan- 
ism or fanaticism must deal directly with 
the problems of morale. It is the inner 
spirit of the devotee that must be met 
and conquered. His physical condition 
and mental processes are secondary to the 
peculiar self that lies back of all externals. 

Hating Heathenism 

The easiest way to deal with the 
"heathen" is to assume an attitude of 
belligerent dogmatism and roundly de- 
nounce his barbarous practices and un- 
christian beliefs. Since he is a heathen, 
he is wrong and must be set right at all 
costs. Being a child of the devil, how can 
he be other than diabolical? The head-on 
fight is comparatively easy and leads com- 
placently to the attitude of the missionary 
himself, but it is a confession of fatal 
weakness nevertheless. Shotgun evan- 
25 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

gelism requires nothing more than very 
general marksmanship and produces very 
indefinite results. When did ever clear 
vision follow blind antagonism? 

Pagan Morale 

The morale of paganism presents a rela- 
tively easy approach to the Christian 
propagandist. The spirit of a Chinese 
Buddhist priest in a far-inland town is 
decidedly negative and presents but a 
spongy resistance to the virile approach 
of Christianity. The moral tone of a 
faith that centers in filthy and tumbled- 
down temples and owes its existence to 
the incantations of illiterate and dishev- 
eled degenerates cannot stand before the 
clean and wholesome spirit of the Christian 
missionary. The morale of hoary and un- 
intelligent tradition is effective mainly 
through sheer immobility. It is the re- 
sistance of a vast sandbank that swallows 
attacks and blocks the road to progress. 

This morale of pagan inertia is the 

harder to overcome because there is no 

discoverable reason for anything. If there 

were, it could be segregated and attacked 

26 



PAGANISM AND FANATICISM 

and something decided. But lacking ra- 
tional sanction, there is no reasoning it 
out of the way. Decisive engagements are 
impossible with sandbanks and sponges. 

Proclaim the Better Way 

What the missionary has to do, then, is 
not to reason at all, but to proclaim and 
awaken and inspire a new hope that will 
plant seeds of spiritual life where they 
will spring up and produce forms of 
living faith. Some missionaries have 
wasted years in trying to persuade people 
that they had a way that would be 
better if tried. To inspire with his own 
personal character and interest a few 
people to try that which has made the 
man what he is will soon produce living 
demonstrations that will supersede mere 
polemics. The contagion of example will 
win out. 

There is little cohesion and almost no 
organization in the paganism of the South 
Sea Islands. Japanese monasteries are 
sometimes little more than begging com- 
munities. The fetish worship of the hill 
tribes presents no articulated front. The 
27 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

bushmen of Africa have plenty of tradi- 
tions, and are ruled by them, but they are 
individually and socially approachable on 
personal grounds. A stratified social sys- 
tem in India holds millions, not because it 
is rational, but because it has become in- 
terwoven with all social sanctions. Fond 
of polemic as is the East Indian, he is 
not won to Christianity through defeat 
in argument but by persuasion of living 
results. 

The battle with paganism is won, so far 
as effective resistance is concerned. Tasks 
and problems and heavy burdens there are, 
but they are not the struggle of encounter 
with a virile morale that defends itself and 
fights back to kill. 

On a great rock beside a beautiful river 
stands a picturesque Buddhist temple. 
The scenery from the balcony would lift 
any receptive soul to realms of the sub- 
lime. It was the cleanest temple, the most 
charming setting, and the most intelligent 
priest I had seen. And the reception was 
courtesy and dignity personified. After 
formalities, discussion veered around to 
the weightier matters of faith, and when 



PAGANISM AND FANATICISM 

Buddha and Christ had been discussed, the 
priest shrugged his shoulders and remarked: 
"Oh, well, what is the use? We all sin, 
and human nature cannot be changed. 
Why trouble further in the matter?" 

In the same city stand two large mission 
schools, a good church, a community house, 
a great hospital, and a leper mission, all 
busily engaged in changing human nature. 
Later on, when the native official had ab- 
sorbed modern ideas from the mission and 
had raised funds to provide clean streets, 
running water, and sewerage, he went to 
the missionary to secure superintendency 
of the work. Obviously, the morale of 
paganism does not constitute a serious ob- 
stacle to the work of that missionary. 

Fanaticism 

The missionary who attempts to estab- 
lish Christian faith and its resultant insti- 
tutions amid Mohammedanism, some kinds 
of Hinduism, and some brands of Roman 
Catholicism faces a very different problem. 
When a man will hang by hooks till the 
muscles tear out of his back, or drag heavy 
chains through the streets while his 
29 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

"friends" flay his bleeding body, we are 
dealing with something very different from 
a sponge. Fanaticism fights back, and 
when a man will torture himself unto 
death, it is to be expected that he will 
also be found ready to boil his opponents 
in oil and burn them at the stake. 

It is not hard to understand the spirit 
that tortures its victims, but the morale of 
self-torture needs a little examination. The 
power that induces a widow to mount the 
funeral pyre is not to be lightly reckoned 
with. 

Social Expectation 

The impulsions of a strong social expec- 
tation have much to do with the case. 
When "everybody" maintains a closed 
state of mind on the question, and any 
other course is regarded as unthinkable 
and impossible, there is nothing left for the 
victim but resignation to fate. The sug- 
gestion of nonconformity comes with a 
shock as if in our own land it were proposed 
to cease burying the dead and leave them 
lying in the streets. To withstand the 
social prestige of ages of established cus- 
30 



PAGANISM AND FANATICISM 

torn requires more courage than to walk 
into the fire. 

Fatalism plays its deadly part in the 
drama of fanaticism. To the reasoning and 
more or less unfettered mind of the West 
the closed and bound-for-all-eternity atti- 
tude of the Oriental is all but incompre- 
hensible. But comprehend it we must, so 
far as possible, if we are to meet it with 
any degree of success. When all examples 
and conversations and expectations from 
childhood include the fixed idea that it is 
a meritorious thing to feed children to 
crocodiles, any other idea becomes un- 
thinkable. And where refusal to comply 
would be followed by compulsory obedi- 
ence, why resist the whole social order? 

Probably there is little or no thought of 
resistance or escape. The victim is under 
a "spell," and this spell is the active force 
in fanaticism. Just what is this weird and 
dominant obsession that dethrones reason 
and produces the blind fury of the dervish 
who whirls till he drops dead? 

Unbalanced Personality 

Normal balance of personality is a com- 
31 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

bination of many factors, each of which 
has its place. Normal conduct results from 
a composite of motives under the general 
dominance of judgment. Beneath the sur- 
face of volition a hundred impulses pull at 
the springs of conduct. Every act is the 
result of a combination of motives. All 
motives are mixed, and we do what we do 
because a hundred unseen hands push us 
out into the sea of action. And the saving 
grace of the case is just this mixing of 
motives. Unblended motives are always 
dangerous. One-idea men are always fa- 
natics. Sanity is equilibrium, and only 
when the cargo is distributed and the 
strains equalized can the ship remain on 
an even keel. 

The fanatic is the man who has lost his 
equilibrator and plunges recklessly, ruled 
by one impulse at a time. The complex of 
the single impulsion may be transient or 
lasting, but it is one-idea control. Some 
impulse, normally secondary and subserv- 
ient, springs into the driver's seat and 
throws all other motives overboard. Un- 
reason, blind intensity, and determination, 
wild hatred of nonconformity, loosened 
32 



PAGANISM AND FANATICISM 

forces of destruction upon friend and foe 
alike — these are the traits of the spirit of 
fanaticism that the missionary must meet, 
and it behooves him to consider well his 
methods of approach and plans of cam- 
paign. 

Obviously, the first thing is to try to 
understand this fanatic. Is he moved by 
blind imitation, or by wild fear, or by al- 
luring hopes of paradise, or by material 
rewards for the faithful, or by political 
considerations, or by dread of innovations, 
or by fear of a system of Christian ethics 
that will upset the social order and make 
harems and illegitimate families impos- 
sible? 

The cure for the blind and unreasoning 
morale of the fanatic lies in the equally 
vigorous but rational and spiritualized 
morale of the missionary. Like the de- 
votee, the missionary can die for his cause, 
if need be, but unlike him, he can also 
justify his course by highest reason, and 
he can win men instead of repelling them. 
Over and above all else rises the master 
spirit of the Christian, the spirit of love 
enough to pay the last price, and before 
33 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

this spirit of love the morale of hate must 
ever fall back in defeat. It is slow work, 
but it wins. The morale of fanaticism 
opposes a strong barrier to the progress of 
the new Kingdom, but what the winds of 
antagonism cannot blow down the warmth 
of loving service and personal interest may 
melt away and reveal the ultimate founda- 
tions of human nature bare for the build- 
ing of the better temple of God. 

It is recorded that "they overcame" be- 
cause "they loved not their lives unto the 
death." The morale of sacrifice may be- 
come the highest devotement of self to the 
supreme cause, and the glory of the Chris- 
tian's martyrdom, where inevitable, is its 
triumphant vindication of his morale and 
its fruitful results in a quickened church. 



34 



CHAPTER IV 

SOLDIERS, ATHLETES, AND 
EXPLORERS 

Military morale has come to a new 
meaning since the year 1914. The world 
has learned that superb equipment, thor- 
ough training, near-perfect discipline, and 
intelligent command could not stand before 
hastily gathered and imperfectly equipped 
men with no traditions of world control, 
but possessed of an unconquerable love of 
freedom. It was good morale that made 
these men victors, it was morale that sup- 
plied the munitions and the food and the 
labor and the money and determination 
that won the war. Only a superb morale 
could have raised and equipped and trans- 
ported and believed in the army that saved 
the world to freedom. 

There is good analogy for Paul's figure 
of the Christian soldier. Fighting and mis- 
sionary service are alike in a half dozen 
particulars. The good soldier must have a 
35 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

great cause that will dominate his spirit, or 
he will become a chronic grumbler and 
ultimately a defeated man. He must be 
conscious of vital home connections, or he 
will lose half of his driving power. He 
must possess a conviction of moral values. 
Unless he feels that his side is eternally 
right, he will never put his whole energy 
into his work. The good soldier must get 
the social swing of his cause and be one 
of a great team. He must be subject to 
hardship and monotony and drudgery. A 
soldier good only in charges is a dangerous 
defense. And while most soldiers would 
disclaim anything like spiritual conscious- 
ness, men under terrible pressure come to 
know that close to the inferno of shot and 
shell lies the gateway to a very different 
world, and the sense of the unseen has 
much to do with the spirit of the soldier. 

Morale of the Athlete 

Athletic coaches of the universities have 
made an intensive study of student morale. 
Training camps and tables and rules have 
built up a set of sanctions extremely rigid 
in form and inflexible in application. Woe 
36 



SOLDIERS, ATHLETES, EXPLORERS 

to the lazy or gluttonous or selfish member 
of the team upon which the honor of the 
school depends. If he fails to do his best, 
it were better for him that he had never 
crossed the campus line. For the honor of 
the team, for the glory of the university, 
for the standing of the crew, any sacrifice 
seems small enough. And the missionary 
who cannot get the spirit of team play, 
with all its implied self -surrender of inde- 
pendence and preference, had better never 
have been sent. "Solo stunts" are small 
part of a missionary's program. Loyalty 
to the staff, the mission, the field, the 
church, the kingdom is worth infinitely 
more than any possible personal advantage 
to be gained by pushing oneself in ahead 
of the larger program. Some brilliant mis- 
sionaries have made shipwreck on the rock 
of self-assertion against the larger interests 
of the whole cause. To maintain peace in 
a mission let every worker be willing for 
the others to have all the credit for all 
successes. Under this rule credit, if it 
have any value, will be very equitably dis- 
tributed. There will be glory enough for 
all and to spare. But the missionary in- 
37 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

tent upon results for the cause will not be 
worrying much about glory. 

The Explorers 

After all, the courage required of a 
modern missionary is a mild affair com- 
pared with the tremendous odds faced by 
the men who first sailed around the world 
and explored the south seas. Most mod- 
ern missionaries endure no grilling hard- 
ships. It might be better if they did. 
Whatever we may think of their morals 
and motives, the old conquistador es of the 
New World faced and endured such diffi- 
culties and deprivations as no present-day 
missionary is called upon to undergo. It 
took a Columbus to "sail on" calmly in the 
face of insuperable obstacles. There is 
room for more of that splendid spirit of 
fearless adventure that marked the great 
deeds of the fifteenth and sixteenth cen- 
turies. 

The Pizarros in Peru, Cortez in Mexico, 
Magellan in the Orient, De Soto and Ponce 
de Leon, and all the rest, on down to the 
California forty-niners and the miners of 
the Rand and the Klondyke, every one of 
38 



SOLDIERS, ATHLETES, EXPLORERS 

them possessed courage that a missionary 
may well study and learn to use in his own 
efforts to explore and possess the moral 
and social world for his Lord and Master. 
There have been pioneers and pilgrims 
and explorers and early settlers of the ever- 
receding West. They have wrought and 
fought and died for gain or glory. For the 
proclamation of the good news and the 
establishment of the everlasting kingdom 
should not a man or a woman go forth as 
valiantly as the men who fought and risked 
their all for sheer greed of gold and love of 
adventure? 



39 



CHAPTER V 
JOHN AND PAUL 

The greatest textbook on morale is the 
Bible. From Enoch to John on Patinos, 
the book is a study and interpretation of 
men who achieved the spirit that overcame 
the world. To walk with these men is to 
catch their tireless stride through life. Cer- 
tainly, the inspiring characters of the book 
have had more saving power than contro- 
versies arising over more didactic portions. 
It is possible to misinterpret metaphysics, 
it is rare to misunderstand character. 

Of all the noble army of prophets, 
priests, kings, soldiers, and saints, two more 
fully than others have exposed the inner 
sources of their power. It is no accident 
that the two great mystics gave us nine- 
teen out of the twenty-seven books of the 
New Testament; and the influence of these 
men on the thought and life of the church 
has been in proportion to the space they 
occupy in the Christian Scriptures. 
40 



JOHN AND PAUL 

John the Apostle 

Three characteristics of John are per- 
tinent to this discussion. John was by 
nature intense. Weaklings do not try to 
destroy those who disagree with them. 
Such natural intensity may become fa- 
naticism or devotion. Under the unfold- 
ing and stimulating power of a strong 
affection John became the great lover of 
his Lord and of his fellow men. When 
love had done its work we hear no more 
about fire from heaven. 

The wrath of consuming fire is not a 
foundation for permanent missionary work. 
If a man love God enough, the glow of his 
devotion will burn the rancor out of his 
heart, and leave the fine gold of construc- 
tive affection. 

John was the apostle of the inner fellow- 
ship. Following Christ was for him an 
intensely personal matter. To love Jesus 
was the same thing as to love the brethren. 
In all amazement he asks how a man could 
do otherwise. So close of kin are the two 
burning passions of love for God and for 
men that John became a little ambiguous 
41 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

at times in talking about them. And 
when a man loves God so much that he 
cannot clearly distinguish between the 
love he has for his Lord and that for his 
fellow men, he is not far from the spirit 
of the apostle who laid his head on Jesus's 
breast. 

Utter Certainty of Spiritual Things 
In his utter certainty of spiritual things 
John reaches his climax. Where lesser men 
falter John walks with steady stride. 
Where others wonder and conjecture, John 
shouts in triumph, "We know." There is 
no painful speculation with John. He has 
his problems and his contacts with things 
beyond human understanding, but so cer- 
tain is he of the eternal realities behind 
these pageants in the sky that he just 
paints the undescribable as well as he can, 
and small men ever since have been trying 
to force mechanical interpretations upon 
John's clouds of glory, trailing in sublime 
mysteries across the heavens. 

There have been failures on the mission 
fields, but they have not come from too 
close following of John. 



JOHN AND PAUL 

Paul 

The spiritual attainments of Paul involve 
much more than the experience on the 
Damascus road. Only a Saul of Tarsus 
could have become a Paul through that 
experience. In his early life four factors 
appear, each strongly reflected in his after 
years. Any man with these elements in 
his life, plus the heavenly vision, will be a 
good missionary. 

1. Saul was a Hebrew of the Hebrews, 
with a spiritual inheritance. 

2. Saul was a Roman citizen, with a 
world horizon. 

3. Saul was educated at the feet of 
Gamaliel, with broad intellectual sym- 
pathies. 

4. Saul was a Pharisee of the Pharisees, 
an ecclesiastical aristocrat. 

Elements of Background 

True, all of these things were counted 
as of no value, but at the same time they 
remained as a background of his new per- 
sonality and thereafter appear as spiritual 
capacity, world consciousness, intellectual 
43 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

breadth, and high idealism. The inspired 
and ennobled Paul is the old Saul trans- 
formed and lifted to his highest person- 
ality. 

There are few elements in a man's back- 
ground that may not become useful fac- 
tors of his emancipated and energized self. 
Even dark chapters of degradation have 
been turned to account and the most 
crooked characteristics have been purified 
and transformed into useful traits in a 
better personality. If the "son of thunder" 
and the bitter persecutor could become the 
two greatest men of a century, there is 
hope that some of our twisted tendencies 
may yet be turned to good account. How 
may it be done? 

"An Original Experience of Christ" 
Paul attributes his changed life to a 
transformation linked with a revelation of 
Christ "in me." He is very jealous of his 
apostleship and defends it in no uncertain 
terms. "It pleased God to reveal his Son 
in me," he asserts. This sense of a special 
revelation never leaves him. He has been 
made custodian of a heavenly mystery re- 
44 



JOHN AND PAUL 

vealed to men through himself, and if he 
fails to proclaim it, the world will lose the 
message. Any man who goes about his 
work feeling like that will attain results 
not to be accounted for by training or 
influence or equipment. There is a divine 
spirit about a man whose heart God has 
touched. He is different. His words and 
walk will speak in clear tones and men 
will know what the Spirit said to him in 
the secret place. God has made a con- 
fidant of him and he must proclaim his 
message or perish. There is no alternative. 

Personal Identity with Christ 

Paul came to an intense consciousness 
that "for me to live is Christ." Not like 
Christ, but Christ in him. Mysticism 
could go no further. Christ walked, talked, 
thought, spoke, and worked in Paul. What 
a morale for a missionary! It was no 
figure of speech. Whether on the burning 
sands of the desert, or on the trackless sea, 
or amid a Judaean mob, Christ was in him, 
and in this consciousness all toil, danger, 
hardship, hunger, fatigue, and torture fade 
away into mere trifles of the passing hour. 
45 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

Christ is suffering these things with him, 
and they are not worth mentioning. 

The secret of Paul's tremendous life and 
labors is not Paul's polemic, but Paul. As 
glorious California Shasta rises above the 
foothills at its feet, Paul rises majestically 
above his own arguments. The man him- 
self is the one transcendent argument for 
whatever made him what he is. And when 
he throws the whole weight of his illumi- 
nated personality on the scales of life there 
must be a registering of results in every 
life that feels the impact of the man. 
Persecutions and martyrdom are mere de- 
tails in a life scheme that counted not any 
cost if by any means he might win some 
to the Christ who had transformed him. 
It is not strange that such a personality 
made the most profound impression ever 
registered on human hearts by any man. 

Sense of the Unseen 

Both John and Paul have an overwhelm- 
ing sense of the unseen. They are always 
conscious of an in-crowding universe, far 
transcending the limits of human speech. 
When a man has seen and heard the in- 



I 



JOHN AND PAUL 

visible and the unutterable, life can never 
again be a matter of picking and choosing 
what may be most agreeable and least 
difficult. No hour can be idled away. 
Every moment is precious that may, by 
even a little, further the business of a life 
dedicated to the unfinished task of Jesus 
Christ. 

With both these men mysticism rises 
steadily through the years with a growing 
experience of eternal values. At last this 
spiritual realism floods all thought, colors 
every motive, controls every act, domi- 
nates the whole self. It is not rhapsody, 
it is conscious experience when Paul ex- 
claims, "For me to live is Christ." For 
such men "all things are possible" because 
they "can do all things through Christ." 
Their God is always able to supply all 
their need. All things are theirs and there 
is a Grace that is always all-sufficient. All 
things work together for good because they 
love God, and they have all and abound. 
There is no lack nor limit to the all- 
sufficiency of Him whose they are and 
whom they serve. 

Further than this it is not possible for a 
47 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

human being to go in utter identification 
with his Lord. And for any man who 
attains this life that is hid with Christ in 
God, little needs to be said about the 
morale of the missionary. Such a man 
becomes his own standard. 

Christ for the World 

Growing out of this sense of identity 
with Christ follows naturally enough the 
conviction that only Christ is sufficient for 
the needs of the world. There is no cure 
for a very sick humanity. To make men 
know him and the power of his resurrec- 
tion is the one business before which all 
other issues of life fade and are forgotten. 
When such a man speaks other men must 
listen and thereafter be divided. We can- 
not dissect the morale of John or Paul, 
God forbid, but we may sit at their feet 
and learn very much from men who have 
been with Christ and can tell us about him. 

It Takes Time 

No missionary can attain to his own 
measure of the spirit of Christ in a month 
or a year. Neither Paul nor John reached 

48 



JOHN AND PAUL 

their Delectable Mountains at once. But 
as the path climbs, the air clears and the 
horizon recedes until clearer vision brings 
better understanding. 

It is required first that a man be found 
traveling in the pathway that leads on 
toward the heights; and if he faints not 
by the way, in due time he shall attain. 
Even to acquire a little of the stature of 
these spiritual giants is to solve most of 
the problems of a missionary's life. Such 
men as these in any age will dominate the 
spiritual life of the world. The modern 
missionary who can find the springs from 
which these men drank, and draw from 
them, may influence profoundly that part 
of the world assigned to him as his spiritual 
inheritance. 



49 



CHAPTER VI 
THE CALL AND THE TASK 

If the most determinative factor in a 
missionary's life is his own personality, 
then the years of preparation should in- 
clude some attention to the development 
of effective morale. There are things that 
a candidate should know before he be- 
comes a missionary. 

We are now well away from the idea 
that all the eager volunteer needs is to 
hear a "call" and forthwith arise and go, 
trusting to such support and success as 
"the Lord may be pleased to send." All 
too evidently some of these "calls" have 
been but queer noises in the night, much 
misunderstood. 

Why Does a Missionary Go? 

Why is a missionary? What motives 

lead men and women to exile themselves 

and readjust their lives at every personal 

and social point of contact? Why should 

50 



THE CALL AND THE TASK 

an adult who has once established a basis 
of life begin all over again and provide 
himself a complete working equipment, in- 
cluding his clothing, house, friends, food, 
working habits, comforts, recreations, and 
even speech and social sanctions? Any 
adequate mastery of a new language means 
almost a recasting of the habits of thought. 

The objections to such conduct have 
been fully stated. Every candidate meets 
some of them. In some form comes the 
suggestion that he is doing a foolish- and 
futile and perhaps an insane thing. That 
many turn back is not strange. The mar- 
vel is that anyone goes, and stranger still 
are long lives, wholly and unflinchingly de- 
voted to such service regardless of every 
sacrifice involved. 

Why do they do it? At least five factors 
appear in the making of such decisions. 

1. Romance 

The romance of foreign missionary work 
makes a strong appeal to people whose 
imaginations have been touched by the 
stories of the heroes and martyrs and 
leaders whose lives have laid "foundations 
51 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

for Christian empires." To help establish 
a new earth and cause a light to shine 
among the darkened nations is a wonderful 
thing. And some sense of the romantic is 
a good thing. God pity the people who 
have none of it. 

2. Travel 

Not always consciously separated from 
other factors is a desire to travel and "see 
the world." The wanderlust is born in 
some people and drives them about the 
earth restlessly searching for some new 
thing. Missionaries who have been in- 
fluenced much by this love of adventure 
are apt to shift about much and never 
continue long in one stay. And their lives 
are not often large dividend-payers for the 
Kingdom. Unless some deeper motive than 
this actuates men to a decision for foreign 
mission service their contribution will not 
be very valuable. 

3. The Personal Touch 

Perhaps the personal touch influences as 
many people as any other motive. They 
have come to know some foreign mis- 

52 



THE CALL AND THE TASK 

sionary and have listened to his stories, 
read his letters, followed his work, and 
through his life have been thrilled with 
the impulse to go and do likewise. This 
motive is valid and accounts for more life 
decisions than can be traced directly 
thereto. Most human decisions are made 
on largely personal grounds. 

4. Fruitful Life Investment 

A reasoned desire to invest one's life as 
fruitfully as possible, and a conviction that 
mission work shows the greatest discrep- 
ancy between need and supply of workers, 
has brought many a candidate to the point 
of offering himself for such service as he 
could best render. When one considers 
the pitifully small supply of workers at 
home and in foreign fields, the challenge 
of the unmet needs of the non-Christian 
world constitutes a sight draft on the best 
that any man has to give to the most far- 
reaching and fundamental task ever com- 
mitted to men. 

5. A Direct Call 

There is a call to missionary service to 
53 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

be accounted for by none of these factors. 
Not every missionary has had such an 
impulsion, but many have been conscious 
of an inner urge that rang in their souls 
like the ceaseless surge of the surf on the 
shore. A man may get to the field with- 
out such a call, and he may become a good 
missionary on the basis of his desire to 
serve. But for him on whose spirit the 
mantle has fallen there are but two courses 
possible. He may follow the voice or he 
may turn a deaf ear and face a crippled 
and relatively fruitless life. 

When a man or a woman has this fire in 
the bones there is no peace until the ques- 
tion is settled and the life is aligned with 
the call. The marked soul may struggle, 
but there will be no peace. He reads of 
the sailing of a party of missionaries for 
their fields, and spends a sleepless night 
and a wretched week. He reads of mis- 
sionary plans and projects and goes about 
like a condemned man because he has no 
part in it. On all sides news items, mis- 
sionary meetings, chance remarks, returned 
missionaries themselves, rise up to meet 
him and in the night his accusing con- 
54 



THE CALL AND THE TASK 

science haunts his dreams. O wretched 
man that he is until the question is settled! 

The Best Missionaries 

Who make the best missionaries? The 
called or the chosen? Those who are 
stricken down by the great impulsion or 
those who face the issue and deliberately 
decide to put their lives into the great 

cause? 

The best missionaries are those who 
make adequate preparation and then go to 
the field and stay there, rendering efficient 
service throughout the years allotted to 
them. Some of the great leaders had dis- 
tinct calls and some never had a conscious 
call other than their desire to serve most 
effectively. 

A missionary call is like any other call 
of God to a human life. It may be the 
trumpet tones or the earthquake shock that 
upsets a man's life to get his attention. ^ It 
may be the inner whisper of a loving 
Presence, or it may be the granting of a 
burning desire to go into all the world and 
receive a kingdom. The final test is the 
result of a man's life. If with the heavenly 
55 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

light anyone hear His Voice in a focused 
command, let him not be disobedient unto 
the heavenly vision, or he may go through 
life blind. But if no such flash or command 
is experienced, let him not turn aside from 
a desire to go out and do a man's full share 
of the task left us by our Lord. Interest in 
missionary work and desire to do one's 
part may be as valid a call as the voice of 
the Lord coming in a dream by night, or 
the restless "Woe is me if I preach not the 
gospel." 



56 



CHAPTER VII 

THE MISSIONARY IN THE 
MAKING 

What Shall the Candidate Do? 

A missionary's life is not a checking off 
on a round of daily duties ; neither should a 
candidate be advised and instructed and 
exhorted to death. Too much rule-making 
in advance kills the spirit of service. The 
good missionary must be a man or woman 
able to make rules and change them over- 
night if need be. There are plenty of 
advisers competent to prescribe curricula 
and mental calisthenics. The serious can- 
didate obviously will get the best mental 
equipment possible. He will accumulate 
discipline and information and ideals, he 
will make a beginning on the language of 
his field, he will cultivate acquaintance 
with every missionary he can reach. 

The candidate will begin his missionary 
work with the people about him, which 
51 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

does not mean that he will be constantly 
preaching to his patient friends. But he 
must get his personal influence into action. 
If he cannot do effective work with people 
of his own race and kind, and whose speech 
he understands, what can he hope to do 
with aliens and strangers, speaking an un- 
known tongue and possessing not even 
ideals to comprehend what he would teach? 

What Is Candidate Moeale? 

A candidate should maintain wholesome 
and positive relations with life at as many 
points as possible. Normality far out- 
weighs eccentricity as foundation on which 
to build effective missionary morale. One's 
contacts with life must be kept in good 
working order, or he is apt to hear some 
mixed voices. Human contacts are vital, 
since all effective output of life goes over 
those connections. If the man fails here, 
there will be no useful result, no matter 
what qualifications he may possess. It is 
useless to try to be a missionary unless one 
can make friends with almost everybody. 
There are a few intense people who gather 
a very small circle of friends (sometimes a 
58 



MISSIONARY IN THE MAKING 

"circle" of but two or three people) and 
exclude the rest of the world. Let all such 
broaden their fellowships or stay at home. 
Wholesomeness affords the only per- 
manent basis of missionary personality. 
Hermits, people afflicted with "piousity," 
and moody souls have no place among 
missionaries. Missionary conditions are 
too straight to allow room for up-and- 
down folks who cannot yield in nonessen- 
tials. Verily, some good fellows and social 
desirables and college leaders shall enter 
into the Kingdom before such tempera- 
mental aspirants. 

The Gift That Is Within 

The good candidate may well stir up 
the gift that is within him, no matter what 
that gift may be. Chalk-talks, furniture- 
making, farming, shop work, trades, slight- 
of-hand, photography, histrionics, poetry, 
and entomology — these and a hundred 
other "gifts" have high usefulness. It is 
not so much a matter of what one can do as 
that he may be able really to do something 
and do it well. 

Many triumphs of the missionary's work 
59 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

have been the products of skill in some 
trade or hobby peculiar to some worker 
who found an emergency and used his gift 
to meet it. 

One business-loving missionary organ- 
ized a credit association among Christian 
merchants and carried them through a 
crisis when heathen shopkeepers failed on 
every hand. 

A militant missionary slew tigers in his 
territory and brought men by thousands 
to hear the gospel from the man who had 
saved their lives. 

A vigorous propagandist ferreted out 
opium joints, smashed them to bits, and 
spread ruin and devastation about the 
premises. He brought the guilty to their 
knees and after inaugurating law and 
order, later established a church. 

A skilled organizer got control of a tract 
of land and placed a thousand starving 
famine refugees on modern farms and made 
them self-supporting as the first installment 
of an agricultural scheme that began to 
revolutionize the lives of several millions 
of people. 

It was a medical missionary who enter- 
60 



MISSIONARY IN THE MAKING 

tained a passing pilgrim by curing his 
fever, filling his tooth, mending his watch, 
repairing the lock on his traveling chest, 
adjusting his eyeglasses, cutting his hair, 
and finding guides for his journey. When 
the traveler departed he left the missionary 
making a wooden leg for a man whose limb 
he had amputated three months before. 

One man left a career as an engineer for 
mission service, but in the siege of Peking 
saved the lives of the impounded foreigners 
by organizing effective defenses. 

A mechanical genius installed an electric 
outfit on his automobile and operated a 
moving-picture machine with which he 
showed Bible films at night and induced 
thousands to buy Gospels as the price of 
admittance. 

A trained nurse established a dispensary 
in a leper village and thereby won many to 
righteousness. 

A young architect relinquished with re- 
gret a promising career at his drafting 
board to become a missionary. Pagan op- 
position cut off self-support, whereupon he 
opened a school in architecture and brought 
in a group of young men for intensive 
61 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

training, while the earnings supported the 
work. Thus was founded one of the 
unique missions of the Orient. 

It was a young man with a gift for ex- 
pression who became the social bright spot 
for many a dreary evening in a mission 
station. 

A host of singers and players have 
charmed away the evil spirits of loneliness 
and discouragement till all the world 
seemed brighter and better — and it was. 

And what shall we say of the artists and 
hand-workers and singers and players and 
embroiderers and engineers and stock- 
raisers and storekeepers and bookkeepers 
and preachers and teachers and editors 
and printers and blacksmiths and carpen- 
ters and medicine-mixers and business 
managers and dentists and gardeners and 
scientific explorers, and all the hosts of 
others who have used their own particular 
gifts that by all means they might save 
some? 

All of which has to do with the attitude 
of mind of the candidate and the prepara- 
tion for his life service. Of all men, the 
missionary is the last to suppose that he 
62 



MISSIONARY IN THE MAKING 

should be a recluse, a "man apart," a 
specialist in solemnity, a superior being set 
for an ensample to be consulted. He is 
first and last a man among other men, 
and given the reserves and backgrounds 
of devotion and intelligence, like his divine 
Lord, will do his best work when he goes 
eating and drinking among his people, al- 
ways one of them that he may win some 
of them to something better than himself. 

Five Essentials to Success 

Five things are essential to success. The 
effective worker must know himself and 
understand something of his own capacity 
and limitations. Otherwise he will fight 
the air with futile gestures. 

He should know people. Humanity is 
still the proper study of the man who is 
to devote his life to the remaking of human 
nature. All the humanities, philosophy, 
sociology, biology, and any other 'ology 
that deals with living people are worth 
while. 

He should know enough history and 
philosophy to get a broad background for 
his thinking. 

63 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

He should know his Bible, for, after all, 
his message is in and of the Book, and 
unless he can teach it effectively he will 
wander about the field of morals and 
ethics and establish no abiding city of 
character. 

He should know, above all else, his 
Lord and Master, for Paul asserts that, 
compared with this understanding, all 
other learning is but foolishness. 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN 

There is a vast discrepancy between the 
number of young people who at some time 
and in some way volunteer for missionary 
service and the very different number who 
finally get to the field. And there is yet a 
different figure for those who stay on the 
work after they arrive. 

The Many Called 

In a general way, out of fifty persons 
who are "called" sufficiently to express in 
some way an interest and state a desire to 
enter missionary service, about thirty- 
eight will drop out and the remaining 
dozen will enroll as candidates. Four of 
these will withdraw their names, four more 
will drop out as soon as any definite work 
is offered them, and of the remaining four 
one will drop out at the last moment, one 
will return at or before the end of the first 
65 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

term of service, one will leave the field for 
a time and later enter some other mission 
field, and the last one will settle down, an 
increasing success as the years go by. 

What are the causes of this enormous 
shrinkage? Many impulsive people 
promptly reconsider when a definite offer 
is made. To offer one's fife *f or service is 
such a beautiful thing to do, and brings 
admiring and sympathizing friends who 
offer hearty good wishes at the rally 
services. It is fine to be a sacrifice on 
the missionary altar so long as the altar 
is in the dim distance and the service in 
the remote future. 

Many candidates have not the slightest 
idea as to what is required of them as can- 
didates, or will be expected of them on 
the field. Occasionally there is friction in 
the candidate's family that works against 
good intentions. And in nearly all failures 
there is preeminently failure to attain the 
"missionary spirit," which is nothing more 
or less than morale. Certainly, something 
more than rapture and good intentions is 
required to make an effective missionary. 
The present ratio of those who fail to con- 
66 



THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN 

nect with a definite task bears distressing 
resemblance to the biological ratios of 
survival. 

Probably no work is more underesti- 
mated than that of the missionary. Psy- 
chological tests cannot determine the 
ultimate reactions of men to their work, 
but they can determine something of the 
quality of raw material with which the 
training processes begin. And any effec- 
tive training must include those personal 
and inspirational factors that develop the 
highest morale. 

Before a missionary can become a leader 
of other men he must come to some rich- 
ness and satisfactory spiritual experience in 
his own life. He must have a foundation 
in a good stomach and steady nerves and 
sound lungs. He must have training and 
adaptability. He must possess a sense of 
order, a capacity for consecutive action, a 
power to plan and then carry out the plan 
to its proper terminal. Some very capable 
men have almost canceled their output by 
their inability to run on one track for any 
length of time. "One poor plan is better 
than three good ones." 
67 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

The missionary will properly enough re- 
sent the imputation that he is a peculiar 
person in a class by himself. If he is pe- 
culiar, the world will find it out soon 
enough without reference to his calling. A 
man's residual self will work its way to the 
surface regardless of imposing appearances 
and high-sounding introductions. Inevit- 
ably, and sometimes tragically, his inner 
self will appear projected on the screen of 
his conduct and attitude toward life. The 
strains of mission work certainly will strip 
away all artificialities and leave the naked 
soul face to face with raw humanity. 

What Makes the Missionary 

Allowing for individual variations and 
adaptabilities, here are a few characteris- 
tics that ought to appear in some degree 
in the personal repertoire of every mis- 
sionary. 

Capacity for Isolation. A missionary is a 
long way from his own kind of people, and 
if he cannot come to be at home with his 
work he will die at heart. To be a friend 
of strangers and at the same time be 
content to live a lonely life is not always 
68 



THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN 

easy. He must be in good company when 
alone. 

Hobby Riding. No man can spend all 
his waking hours at one task. The relaxa- 
tion of a good hobby adds to a man's 
morale by saving him from the dizzy dis- 
tortion of the one idea. It matters little 
what the hobby may be — insect-collecting, 
photography, horticulture, floriculture, 
touring, tennis, or trombone- tooting; but 
if the avocation can have some indirect 
relation to the day's work, there may be 
great gain thereby at times. One Oriental 
missionary experimented for years in bud- 
ding American fruits onto native branches 
and at last had the satisfaction of seeing 
the Chinese steal the buds from his trees 
that they might grow them in their own 
gardens. 

Sense of Humor 

Mere joking has its value as a social 
sauce, but for the missionary humor has a 
far more important function than that of 
making people giggle. A working sense of 
humor is one of the prime elements of 
saving grace. It is not a matter of laugh- 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

ing because to laugh is pleasant. It is a 
question of one's whole attitude toward 
life. 

Humor brings relief from tension and 
allows the overstrained personality to re- 
turn to normal appraisals again. 

Humor clears the air for a new start, 
and breaks the groundings of the circuits 
of normality. 

Humor is the balance wheel of per- 
sonality. No man with a keen sense of 
the ludicrous can take himself more seri- 
ously than he ought to take, or think of 
himself too highly. How could he? 

Humor is the "measure of a man's mar- 
gin." Humor calls out the reserves of 
sanity, when the air becomes obscured by 
the blue haze of discouragement or the 
red glare of indignation. 

Humor opens the closed shutters of the 
soul and lets in again the sunshine of good 
nature. 

There are elements of morale that a 
missionary can get along without, but 
humor is not one of them. 

The list of qualifications required in an 
available candidate is now pretty definitely 
70 



THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN 

ascertained. A board may occasionally re- 
ject some candidate who may eventually 
make good when given a chance, but the 
established rules of procedure have the 
backing of a century of experience, and a 
comparison of results attained by the ap- 
proved candidates of the regular Mission 
Boards and the self-appointed missionaries 
sent out independently, establishes the 
soundness of the accepted principles of 
selection. 

Dr. Arthur J. Brown, of the Presbyterian 
Board, mentions the accepted qualifications 
of the available candidate in the following 
order: 

1. Health, given first place because fun- 
damental. 

2. Age, 25 to 33 years, with exceptions. 

3. Education, varying according to class 
of service. 

4. Executive ability and force of charac- 
ter. More needed than in work in the 
home land. 

5. Common sense. (Might be put next 
to health in order of importance.) 

6. Steadiness of purpose. To carry on 
after the halo has faded. 

71 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

7. Temperament, adaptability, relia- 
bility, amiability — in short, unselfishness. 
A missionary should at least be a gentle- 
man. 

8. Doctrinal views. Conformity to ac- 
cepted views, without surrender of private 
judgment. 

9. Marriage, an important factor in ad- 
justment of work. 

10. Freedom from financial obligations. 
A mission field is not a place to pay debts 
or lay up bank accounts. 

11. Christian character and experience, 
without which all else must register but 
failure. (See full discussion of these and 
other essentials in The Foreign Missionary, 
by Dr. Brown.) 

Enemies of Morale 

There are certain well-defined forces 
that weed out new missionaries at an 
alarming rate. To locate and appraise 
these in advance is to be forearmed 
against their influence. 

Monotony saps the vitality and endur- 
ance of people who five more or less in the 
enthusiasms of change and excitement. 
72 



THE FEW WHO ARE CHOSEN 

There will be little enough of monotony 
in a mission field where the missionary is 
alive to the unfailing interests and reac- 
tions of native life. And with a forward- 
moving program of mission work nothing 
is more interesting than the unfolding of 
life under the influence of spiritual stimuli. 

Routine drudgery does its deadly work 
or it becomes a blessing as indicated in 
the discussion of "discipline," elsewhere in 
this book. "If something would only blow 
up," exclaimed a tired toiler. From a far 
interior point came a veteran missionary 
to a seaport. She deposited her baggage 
in the mission house and exclaimed, 
"Where is the best moving picture show 
in town?" 

Aimlessness, lack of definite objective, 
general pottering about destroy more mis- 
sionary usefulness than pestilence. 



73 



CHAPTER IX 

ARTIFICIAL MORALE 

There is a general conviction that pub- 
lic spirit and personal enthusiasm can be 
produced at will by certain well-defined 
and established propaganda methods guar- 
anteed to cure listless student bodies, inert 
campaigns, and mechanical-mindedness. 

Propaganda Methods 

These regulation promotion policies have 
a certain value. They seem to accomplish 
much. The galvanized social nervous sys- 
tem responds to the programs and parades 
and rallies and rousements and bonfires 
and brass bands, and the amused citizens 
and soldiers and students listen to the 
fervid exhortations of yell leaders, recruit- 
ing agents, or four-minute men, and con- 
sider that more zeal really ought to be 
shown for the cause. For the current 
hour it looks as if something had been 
done. 

74 



ARTIFICIAL MORALE 

The next week is very apt to find mat- 
ters about where they were before the 
pressure was laid on. Highest morale is 
unconscious and arises as the result of 
forces that work within us reactions the 
more effective because unpremeditated. 

All genuine morale bears a touch of 
mysticism, an element of the spontaneous 
that acts like a spark amid the tinder and 
starts a blaze. The quality of the flame 
will depend upon the kind of fuel the fire 
finds ready. It takes an immense amount 
of effort to start a fire by sheer friction, 
the direct propaganda way. Some great 
shock, some mighty appeal, some steady 
discipline will kindle a fire directly, and 
the fire will burn on as long as there is 
anything to feed the flame. 

Staying Power 

In the end it is staying that wins. Early 
in the world war the French soldier as- 
serted that he was the bravest soldier in 
the world, but the British soldier claimed 
to be brave fifteen minutes longer than 
any other fighter. 

If good morale were merely shouting and 
75 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

flagwaving, we could soon finish the cam- 
paign. Some machine might be devised 
that would cry aloud and trail bunting in 
the air. Experience proves, however, that 
some great effervescers are poor mission- 
aries, and it has been known that popular 
home platform men have themselves con- 
stituted problems on the mission field. 
Morale is not fireworks. It is not en- 
thusiasm. It may be noisy at times and 
it may be very quiet. Good morale is the 
spirit that goes steadily on with the work 
regardless of wind and weather. Good 
morale plans and prays and labors and 
waits on till the end. Good morale plows 
and plants, waits for the ripened grain, 
and does not pull at the roots or cut off 
the tops from the growing crops for the 
sake of an enthusiastic report or a dra- 
matic speech. 

The telling of tragic or thrilling stories 
does not indicate good morale so much as 
it hints at a spirit of nervous unrest that 
cannot get on without the stimulus of 
constant high successes. Too many "stage 
stories" in an appeal are a bad system. 

Any assumed quality dies in time and 
76 



ARTIFICIAL MORALE 

leaves a bad spot in character. Mission- 
aries, like other public men, have their 
temptations to unreality, but the results 
are especially damaging with the mission- 
ary. All good workers will develop devo- 
tion, courage, activity, cordiality, and zeal, 
but once consciously assumed, these be- 
come pseudo-characteristics and create an 
atmosphere of insincerity that prevents the 
development of genuine originals. 

Organized Facts 

But facts, like figures, may be assembled 
so as to deceive or discourage or distort the 
real issue. Unorganized facts are confusing. 
Much depends upon how the emphasis is 
distributed. An appeal that will stimulate 
the missionary spirit must be grounded in 
facts, but the facts must be organized and 
interpreted, or the grain of principle will 
be lost in the chaff of details. A mission- 
ary may be a reporter, which is well, but 
his reporting will be doubled in value if it 
be also an interpretation and a prophecy. 
And valid prophecy must always be closely 
related to determinative facts of a situation. 

Any missionary interest arising from re- 
77 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

sponse to appeals largely personal in char- 
acter and emotional in type is apt to be 
transient. It may be genuine enough while 
it lasts, but the personal factor changes, 
the enthusiasm abates, and some other 
dramatic appeal crowds out the cause that 
needs assistance. 

Such is the bane of whirlwind campaigns 
for funds and workers sometimes carried on 
by enthusiastic missionary speakers who 
make dramatic appeals for money to carry 
on more or less independent missionary 
enterprises. When "the tumult and the 
shouting dies," the work that has been 
suddenly revived, expires with small hope 
of any permanent resurrection. 

The measure of value of missionary 
morale is its staying power. When interest 
and service go on steadily through the 
years, we may be sure that it has founda- 
tions that abide, and that what is builded 
thereon will stand the strains of times and 
seasons that come and go with the ebb and 
flow of the tide of human affairs. 

Morale and Life Results 

What accounts for the failure of so many 
78 



ARTIFICIAL MORALE 

missionaries to get results adequate to 
their preparation, labor, and sacrifice? 
Verily, this is a leading question. The 
meager outcome of some promising lives 
suggests the figure of a railway train ready 
for a journey. Presently a great engine in 
perfect order and with full head of steam 
backs down and bumps against the train. 
Signals are given, the bell rings, and the 
engine pulls out majestically on its run. 
But the train remains unmoved on the 
track. No connection was made. There 
was impact, the passengers felt it, but 
there was no coupling established. Re- 
sults — nothing. 

What is the vital connection between a 
missionary and his life result? It is not 
his age nor his intellect, not his physique 
nor his schooling nor his previous ex- 
perience. All these but made him ready 
to move the train of his task. Neither is 
it the shout with which he sets out upon 
his work. The bump moved the train but 
a few inches and that backward. 

The living link between the man and his 
results is the personality, the spirit, the 
indescribable something that is the man 
79 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

himself, back of and greater than any 
other factor in his life. It is the morale 
of a man that ties him to his work and 
moves his share of the load. It is a tragedy 
that any man has brought a finely equipped 
life to the task and has effected a worthy 
jar on his first impact with his work, and 
later on moved away leaving no results 
worth mentioning. 



80 



CHAPTER X 

THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH 

Given a consuming belief in the worth 
of a cause, there exists in human nature 
an immense capacity for sacrifice. Ther- 
mopylae and Balaklava and Bunker Hill 
and Chateau-Thierry were all wrought by 
faith. The work of Wy cliff e and Luther 
and Wesley was accomplished through an 
overwhelming certainty of the invisible. 
Livingstone, Morrison, Carey, Cox, and 
William Taylor were carried onward by 
the forces of faith in the all-necessity of 
the cause they served. Columbus and 
Magellan and Winthrop and Jason Lee 
plunged into the unknown because they 
lived in the unseen. 

The Foundation 

A man's faith is the foundation on which 
he builds the structure of his personality, 
and from it come the elements of stability 
and courage. "It is a man's idea, his 
philosophy, that fixes the angle of impact 
81 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

of all experiences upon him and so decides 
what effect each experience will have." 

Morale is a state of faith more than it is 
anything else. And since faith is the very 
essence of things not seen, it cannot be 
tested in advance of experience. Praying 
for "faith" as an abstraction, in order 
that, possessing it, one may go forth to 
meet experience, is a reversal of spiritual 
processes. Life supplies the tests, while 
character and conduct measure the reac- 
tions. A man's work is the measure of the 
projecting power of his own inner cer- 
tainty. 

In the long run a missionary lives on the 
productive power of his personal relation 
to the unseen. If life be reduced to visible 
and audible and tangible things, he is 
through before he begins. Measured by 
campaigns and causes, a soldier's faith be- 
comes a silent but powerful factor in his 
fighting spirit. It colors all his motives 
and intensifies his driving power. It keeps 
him fighting on after lesser forces have 
weakened under the struggle. In overcom- 
ing the world it overcomes everything else. 

The missionary's faith links him with 
82 



THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH 

the inexhaustible and preserves and lifts 
his whole energy on to a higher plane. 
There is a mechanical sort of preparation 
that produces a workman correct by rule, 
but without the divine fire of a living 
faith he will become confused under a 
strain, and when the pressure is severe he 
may be troubled by doubts concerning the 
validity of his mission. When a man 
throws his whole life into African jungles 
to start in motion healing forces for the 
open sore of the world, there is something 
more vital than mere schooling or intelli- 
gence or resolution to account for the 
results. 

Faith in the Unseen 

This is the secret of the ultrahuman en- 
durance of the missionary under strain; he 
is upheld by a clear sense of the reality of 
a Spiritual Presence, for faith at its high- 
est is faith in a Person. The worker toils 
on, weary it may be and discouraged often- 
times, but he goes on and his going on 
rests back upon his consciousness that 
Jesus Christ is close by in the hour of 
need. It makes all the difference in the 
83 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

world what his Lord and Master thinks of 
him and of his work. So long as he is 
pleased, what else matters? 

A Personal Faith 

It is this sense of a close Spiritual Per- 
sonality that gives its longest dimension 
and highest value to every man's work. 
The deeds of one day are small, and of a 
lifetime are not great. But when the day 
and the life fall into an ordered plan, and 
become necessary stones in the wall being 
erected under the eye of the Master 
Builder, the case is different. To know 
that the place where we build will con- 
tinue to rise after we are gone is to make 
our building worth while. There is an 
immortality through works that lifts a 
man above the temporality of his daily 
tasks and in the smile of his Lord makes 
him more than conqueror. 

Fear and Love 

Fear and faith are mutually antagonis- 
tic. If "perfect love casteth out fear," 
then conversely fear dries up the springs of 
confidence and trust. Man fears above all 
84 



THE FOUNDATION OF FAITH 

creatures because he is more intelligent 
and more imaginative, and the missionary 
is subject to a whole train of apprehensions 
that arise to trouble his spirit and reduce 
his results. The situation of isolation, re- 
moteness, strangeness, and impossibility of 
being understood tends to beget a host of 
fears, and back of them all is the fear of 
failure. When one is safe in the fold of 
the home church, to renounce all and set 
out to follow Christ is a glorious high call- 
ing, but ten thousand miles away, where 
no one knows or cares or understands, 
there creeps in the insidious dread that the 
great renunciation may, after all, bear no 
justifying results. 

The technique of meeting fear is simple 
enough in theory. To remember that 
everybody else fears, and to recognize fear 
as merely a factor in the unavoidable ex- 
periences of life, and to "take a long 
breath and go in" — these all help more or 
less. 

But the mastery of fear is a matter of 

faith. Where unfaltering confidence fills a 

man's consciousness, fear is automatically 

ehminated. Now, no man can be over- 

85 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

whelmingly conscious of God all the time. 
But he may cultivate the moments of 
vision and by regular routine of devo- 
tional life may frequently find his way to 
the place where the still small Voice is 
heard. And before a surpassing love for 
men and an unshakable certainty of God 
no fear can stand. 

It is sometimes supposed that whereas 
the surroundings of home life are distract- 
ing and tend to devitalize the spiritual life, 
the atmosphere of a foreign mission field 
will be found uplifting and stimulating to 
the spirit. Surely, for him who renounces 
all, special grace will lighten the task and 
the life of the spirit will be more easily 
attained than in one's own country. Such 
vain imaginations leave out of account the 
fact that where social, domestic, and eccle- 
siastical support is wanting, the worker 
must rest his morale almost wholly on his 
own personal consciousness of things di- 
vine. Without this solid foundation in a 
healthy and well-developed spiritual life, a 
mission may become a place of moral and 
spiritual shipwreck. In any case it is not 
an infirmary for sickly saints. 
86 



CHAPTER XI 

DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY 

Some one has defined genius as "the 
deliberate choice of living with major 
issues of life." Whether this is genius 
may be questioned, but it is certainly a 
strong factor in good morale. 

Majors and Minors 

Living with the major issues does not 
avoid dealing with a host of annoying de- 
tails and a lot of tiresome drudgery. The 
major issues of life are not realized with- 
out a lot of mastery of minor issues. To 
get beyond the minors and into the majors 
is one of the most pressing problems of a 
missionary's life. 

No matter what premissionary ideals 
may have been, on-the-field experiences 
must involve constant attention to trifles. 
Executive officials may turn some of this 
drudgery over to private secretaries and 
office staff, but the field man must usually 
87 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

be his own secretary. If letters are 
written, lie must "pound them out" him- 
self. If details about the school or church 
or mission house are attended to, he is 
usually the man to do it. And to attend 
to the thousand details and keep one's 
soul thrilled by the big main issue at the 
same time — there's the rub. 

Duplex Efficiency 

No man's call includes advance informa- 
tion concerning the peculiar strains of mis- 
sion life. Of all the responsibilities that 
devolve upon the missionary, none is 
greater than that due to the necessity for 
his being both a prophet and an adminis- 
trator. And the secret of success in this 
double role rests in the personality of the 
man himself. It is morale at its best, for 
the successful missionary must be a duplex 
man; rather, he must be multiplex if he is 
to do all things. Amid the varied gifts 
and specializations of the home land, one 
may plant and another water, but the mis- 
sionary must do both. At home one may 
dream and devise while others organize and 
administer, but the missionary must be 
88 



DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY 

equally proficient as a seer of visions and 
an executive engineer. He must mount up 
with wings in flights of prophetic discern- 
ment, but he must also be able to walk 
steadily through the daily tasks. 

Bridging the Gap 

To bridge the gap between ideals and 
realizations becomes the missionary's pe- 
culiar test. He must always keep clearly 
in view the new city of God to be brought 
down out of heaven and set up on the 
earth. If the missionary has no such 
vision, his people will perish with him. 

This would not be so difficult if there 
were not always something else in the 
line of view. To look at a filthy native 
village and by faith behold clean streets 
and pure water and modern sanitation re- 
quires that a man see in the clouds while 
his feet are still on the ground. To work 
with crowds of diseased and offensive 
human derelicts and see in them possible 
health and intelligence and moral sound- 
ness generates a nervous strain. To work 
on with wretched buildings and scant fur- 
niture and yet see adequate churches and 
89 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

schools with worthy equipment means a 
tightening tension on vital forces, espe- 
cially if the coming be long delayed. 

Seeing visions is not the hardest point. 
Making them come true is another matter. 
It is not difficult to look over a mission 
situation and sketch an ideal of the things 
that ought to be. To cause them to hap- 
pen is proof of high calling. And hardest 
of all it is to do three things at once, for 
the man must see visions and undertake 
their realization, and meanwhile go on 
working amid disheartening present-tense 
conditions. 

Personality 

The gap can be bridged; it is being done 
every day in nearly every mission station 
on earth. But the bridging is not a mat- 
ter of technical training, it is a question of 
the spirit of the inner life. Flying can be 
taught, also the science of survey and plan- 
drawing. Training may produce a good 
builder and able executive. One may 
learn to walk and not faint. But to 
achieve that too-rare versatility that can 
switch from flying to walking and do both 
90 



DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY 

well the same day is a matter of a man's 
own inner reactions to the challenge of 
life's emergencies and exigencies. In the 
last issue it is the thing in a man that can 
never be measured with a line nor weighed 
on a scale that determines his overcoming 
power. 

There is no logical accounting for a mis- 
sionary's call, nor is there any rational ex- 
planation of his results. Both the man 
and his product belong to a world above 
the rules of "good business" and beyond 
the considerations of "safety first." The 
need is not so much for more missionaries 
as for a superbrand of missionaries who 
will achieve the impossible because they 
are themselves humanly unaccountable. 

Sacrifice and Discipline 

From a great French officer comes the 
dictum that "the soul of the soldier means 
two things, the spirit of sacrifice and the 
spirit of discipline." 

Likewise :c may be said that the soul of 
the missionary is two things, the inspira- 
tion of the great cause and the mastery of 
details through the discipline of drudgery. 
91 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

With these two wings the missionary 
eagle soars above the ruts. By them his 
spirit attains mastery in any wind and 
weather. The "demons of fear, fatigue, 
and pain" will be cast out only when the 
inner spirit rises above its own necessities 
and lives consciously in the major issues. 

Three Disciplines 

1. The drudgery of small daily details 
has much to do with steadying personality 
and producing consecutive effort. To go 
through the same routine of school work, 
day after day; to write so many letters, 
each of small value; to treat so many 
patients, each of no great importance; to 
visit so many stations, none of them very 
flourishing — to do these things day in and 
day out is wearing, but it is also cumula- 
tive, and in the end bears ripe fruit in 
both the work and the worker. 

2. The drudgery of regular physical ex- 
ercise is not an inspiring thing, but it has 
a very vital relation to the output of re- 
sults. A dependable physical habit does 
much to develop a reserve force that will 
not fail in emergencies. Libraries have 

92 



DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY 

been written on the matter of health, and 
sooner or later an intelligent man must 
learn the rules by which he can attain 
and maintain his own body in good work- 
ing order. From that on it is a matter of 
playing the game according to the rules. 
If his spirit cannot master his body and 
bring it under the drudgery of discipline, 
the worker and his work must suffer, and 
to that extent the cause must fail. 

Morale of the spirit is what sound 
health is for the body. To drag along at 
a poor dying rate is to destroy all efficiency 
and infect the surroundings. The man 
who sets himself to the task of doing all 
things through Christ cannot afford to 
drag about a half-nourished and ill- 
conditioned body. If one is not to beat 
the air, but fight effectively, he must take 
the training and live by the rules. 

3. The daily devotional habit sometimes 
drifts near to formalism, but the regular 
moments of prayer and thought are the 
drill that keep the soul fit for the day. 
The regular fifteen minutes at the regular 
time has very high value. The difficulty is 
to find the fifteen minutes, but somehow, 
93 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

somewhere it must be maintained during 
the day's business, if the King's messenger 
is to represent worthily his Master. 

Many great missionaries, like Daniel, 
have been methodical almost to the point 
of becoming mechanical in their devotions. 
When a man kneels upon his knees three 
times a day and does it in the same spot 
with his face turned toward a certain di- 
rection, he may be called a formalist, but 
he is apt to show great stability in emer- 
gencies. 

It is a matter of finding one's climax, 
in the power to "keep on going on," when 
things are going fearfully slow. Since 
habit-forming power lies in the individual, 
and not in the surroundings, there is no 
security except in the deliberate putting of 
first things first and living in the major 
issues. 

Formalities 

American informality is a high achieve- 
ment in a way, but it often interferes with 
devotional schedules and practices; and 
frequently it becomes a serious noncon- 
ductor of influence with the natives who 
94 



DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY 

are unable to understand our seeming 
utter lack of respect for what are to them 
the common decencies of life. We seem 
to show small appreciation of official and 
social values. 

Here is a good place to turn vegetarian 
where meat-eating is offensive to those of 
different standards. It is impossible to 
overdo the consideration and regard paid 
to other people's standards where those 
standards do not conflict with moral prin- 
ciples. In a general way, "it is impossible 
to do one's formalities too well," for by 
these will many be approved or condemned. 

Previous Attainments 

There is the driving impulsion of a man's 
former successes. One outstanding attain- 
ment forever impels a man to measure up 
to his best. A background of former effi- 
ciency and self-respect is armor plate in 
the day of strain. There is the measure of 
what has been done to demand still more. 
A man with such a background will show 
a steadiness and buoyancy impossible to 
the navigator of an uncharted sea. Once 
sure of oneself, the battle is half won. 
95 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

Over every mission door should be written, 
"No doubters need enter here." If they 
do enter, they will not long remain — as 
doubters. Dogmatism has its high use on 
the mission field. But it must be the 
open-minded dogmatism that is sure of es- 
sentials and willing to allow full liberty in 
unimportant things. 

Final Devotement of Whole Person- 
ality 

The climax of missionary service lies in 
that ripened maturity that at last lays 
aside every weight and devotes every atom 
of personality to the one task set before. 
When young people enlist with so much 
of enthusiasm and glow they think they 
are doing just this, but where was ever a 
lonely novitiate who, in the first hours of 
rebuff and discouragement, did not hear 
inner whispers suggesting that he had made 
a mistake? Surely, some one else can do 
the work better. Other young people are 
willing to "try" it, and if they get on well, 
may continue for a time. Should the work 
"not appeal to them," they may drop out. 

Such a state of mind never does effective 
96 



DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY 

work. Not until the discipline of the years 
has eliminated the reservations and brought 
the steady stride that marks the passing 
of illusions and halos does real finality ap- 
pear. Colonel Gorgas is said to have re- 
marked that three causes sent men home 
from the Panama Canal. There was ma- 
laria, there was yellow fever, and there 
were "cold feet," and the cold feet sent 
more home than the other two. 

The Missionary and His Reading 

The case for the pastor's reading habit 
has been often and adequately stated. 
Find the best plea for the faithful reading 
of good books, new and old, by the man in 
the home land and then multiply it by 
three for the missionary. Verily there are 
three multipliers: 

1. Distance from the currents of the 
world's best intellectual and spiritual life. 

2. Isolation from kindred spirits of equal 
or greater ability. 

3. The daily belittling of petty tasks of 
more or less routine nature, without the 
social stimulus of virile American com- 
munity life. 

97 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

No man can maintain a keen mind with- 
out constant replenishing at the springs 
from which flow the contributions of the 
thinkers of all times. The missionary may 
be spared the dissipation of the multipage 
daily paper, though he is eager to see one 
when it reaches him; but he misses the 
undercurrent of stimulus that comes from 
what that paper represents in his life. And 
unless he can establish a regular course of 
self-imposed reading of the things worth 
while his mental life will inevitably go 
stale. 

In many missionary situations books are 
hard to get, but a man can surely arrange 
to read at least six new books a year, and 
less than that means a slowing up of intel- 
lectual life. 

Unique Opportunities 

The missionary has some intellectual op- 
portunities that are denied to his fellows at 
home. There are Oriental literatures and 
philosophies that supply fascinating and 
fruitful fields of research. There are na- 
tives with whom he may discuss questions 
of the spirit and from whom he may se- 
98 



DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY 

cure valuable suggestions as to the inter- 
pretation of some of these long-locked 
treasures of the ancient mind. But if the 
missionary is to keep his own spirit fresh 
and maintain an intellectual morale that 
will not fail him, he will have to solve in 
his own way the problem of having always 
a fresh and partly read book on his desk 
or in his traveling bag. 

The Silent Death 

The insidious mischief about the failing 
reading habit is that its departure is so 
silent and stealthy that one is never con- 
scious of his loss until the guest has fled. 
And when a man ceases to read and grow, 
a subtle deterioration sets in that under- 
mines the sources of his spiritual life, and 
he begins to slow up. If this were a con- 
scious loss, it would not so much matter. 
One might recover the lost treasure and 
go on with his work. Possibly no man 
ever knows when his mind has lost its 
fresh approach to problems, its keen in- 
itiative in attack and its attractive strength 
in carrying burdens. But his associates 
know it and may wonder at the cause. 
99 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

The springs have ceased to flow and the 
mind is going dry. So insidious and deadly 
is the lethargy that follows the ending of 
a man's reading life that he may know it 
only by noting that he has ceased to read. 
Few of his distressed friends or his per- 
plexed followers will have the wisdom or 
the grace to tell him of it. Only while a 
man stands beside the stream of living 
water that bears the intellectual life of 
the world can he minister to his fellow 
men fresh cargoes of the mind and spirit. 

Tragic Miss-Fits 

Discouragement has a decidedly patho- 
logical bearing and registers in constitu- 
tional symptoms. Some missionaries have 
been invalided home on good-looking doc- 
tor's certificates, whose maladies could have 
been traced back to general discouragement 
and unwillingness longer to face the fight. 
Somebody was unpleasant, some one did 
not agree with them,^some one else upset 
their plans, some of the natives did not 
yield to treatment, some pet projects failed 
of official approval, some ideals were shat- 
tered, some "weepy" letters from home 
100 



DISCIPLINE AND DRUDGERY 

brought a consciousness of long distances, 
some personal differences destroyed peace 
of mind; and from gloom to tears, and 
from tears to nerves, and from nerves to 
sleeplessness, and from insomnia to loss of 
appetite the illness grew, till the medical 
man shook his head and said, "Go home." 
At last they reached "God's country" 
again. The tragedy was that they ever 
left it. 

The veteran missionary has his com- 
pensations. He may lack the enthusiasm 
and initiative of youth, but he has at last 
the steady purpose and rich experience of 
a devotion not subject to the fluctuations 
of temperament and the aberrations of 
inexperience. 

The cause will be won by the men who 
have counted as loss what things were 
gain to them in the life they have left 
behind, and literally have abandoned all, 
that they may rest the full weight of their 
lives on the command of Jesus, and chal- 
lenge to service in the neediest fields. 

Such missionaries learned how to endure 
hardness, to stand up and face life without 
a whine, to take it rough, if need be, and 
101 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

without complaints, "to welcome each re- 
buff that turns earth's smoothness rough, 
that bids not sit nor stand, but go." To 
take things as they come and make the 
most of them, to adopt any best means 
at hand to the desired end; or, if need be, 
get results without means; to man and 
master any situation — this is the business 
of the missionary. 



102 



CHAPTER XII 

THE HOME CHURCH 

A missionary is multiplied by his back- 
ing. His position isolates him from close 
touch with his surroundings. He is a 
foreigner and speaks with a brogue. He 
must learn by patient observation the cus- 
toms and intimate traits of the native life 
about him; and not all missionaries suc- 
ceed in getting the native touch. Without 
that something that overlaps boundaries 
and makes the whole world akin he will 
miserably fail, and to acquire this well 
takes time, and during this period of re- 
orientation the greater strains of mission 
life appear. 

Home Backing Multiplies 

A man without a backing at home works 
without momentum. He is like those rail- 
way electric lights that shine dimly on 
storage battery power, but when "picked 
up" by the generator blaze out in bril- 
103 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

liancy. When a man knows that people 
believe in him he "shines" on the impulse 
of their faith added to his own. 

Obviously, when a missionary must get 
to his field as early as possible he has small 
chance to cultivate a wide constituency at 
home. Early furloughs give valuable op- 
portunity for creating new connections, but 
the first years are apt to be lonely enough 
to try the beginner severely. 

A soldier without connections can never 
be much of a soldier. He will always fight 
with a reservation. And when a mission- 
ary is sent out without a constituency he 
cannot deliver much more than half of his 
potential output. A soldier will not risk 
his life unless there is in his consciousness 
something worth fighting for, and it makes 
all the difference in the world whether he 
knows that somebody is expecting him to 
do his best. And when a missionary knows 
that his friends believe in him and expect 
him to do great things in their name, he is 
lifted to a higher place of results. 

Second-Term Success 

The greater results of the second term 
104 



THE HOME CHURCH 

have several explanations. Not only is the 
experience of the first years available for 
reference, but the furlough year has given 
perspective and has made a host of friends. 
The man returns, no longer an apprentice, 
but a veteran. Henceforth some one knows 
him and his work and with sympathetic 
interest upholds his efforts. There are 
churches that look forward to his letters, 
and there are personal greetings sent out 
that mean much in the midst of his trials 
and triumphs. In times of discouragement, 
at that depressing two-o'clock-in-the-morn- 
ing hour, the thought of the people who 
are praying for him will have a wonder- 
fully tonic effect on the morale of a tired 
man. 

Too much halo is a hindrance, even to a 
missionary, but there is compensation in 
the way the expectations of one's friends 
do put him on his mettle. Halos have 
their place and use. 

When the home base becomes also the 
source of supply, mixed results appear. 
Where supplies flow from the constituency 
to missionary it must be said that the re- 
action on the constituency is better than 
105 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

on the missionary. Nowhere is a better 
illustration of the superior blessedness of 
giving over receiving. The home church 
reads and rallies and collects and prays 
and pays, and the showers of blessing fall. 

The results on the field are not always 
unmixed. It is a fine thing when a mis- 
sionary can use his furlough in raising 
funds for this work. But if the large in- 
crease is used to open new work which 
must soon be left without support because 
the missionary cannot remain at home to 
secure more gifts, the last state of the 
work may be worse than the first. Ob- 
viously, all such propaganda work and the 
distribution of the financial proceeds 
thereof should be under the direction of 
the office or authority having consecutive 
responsibility for administration and re- 
sults. Under modern conditions the dan- 
ger here described has been largely elim- 
inated and the whole level of missionary 
education and giving in the home church 
has been lifted to a plane of intelligent 
undertaking of the whole task. 

The missionary, moreover, is in a dan- 
gerous position. The receptive attitude 
106 



THE HOME CHURCH 

lurks at hand and may seize him unawares. 
There is the insidious temptation to close 
every letter with alluring descriptions of 
the vast results easily possible if only 
some one will send just a few more dollars. 
Even where he eliminates his own esti- 
mates of possibilities, he is apt to measure 
the value of his friendships by the divi- 
dends they will pay to his work; and 
economic interest is never a secure nor 
permanent tie with which to bind mis- 
sionary friendships. When the missionary 
degenerates into a sentimental beggar the 
home church is going to get tired of his 
insistent importunities and everlasting 
whining about his hardships and bitter 
loneliness and failing strength. No one 
needs to know more than he that "whining 
is not shining." 

Pernicious Correspondents 

Soldiers in France did not write home 
pathetic letters, begging for special gifts. 
The government saw to it that they did 
not need to do so. Neither did they de- 
scribe their depressing surroundings. The 
writing of many letters may be a weari- 
107 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

ness, a power for good, or a nuisance. 
There is such a thing as a pernicious letter- 
writer, and he works deadly havoc on the 
mission field. Unless a missionary can 
censor his own mail, he had better leave it 
unwritten. 

If a man is really enduring hard knocks, 
his letters will reflect it without emphasis 
on the tragic side of the story. The mak- 
ing of significant sacrifices is a creative and 
stimulative thing, but the stage-set and 
purposely exhibited sacrifice becomes a 
ghastly travesty. Worth-while sacrifices 
restore broken connections, rebuild normal 
spirits, and awaken determination to do 
full duty. 

Tell the Truth 

What the missionary needs to know is 
that the ultimate strength of his cause 
with the home base lies in his facts. Over 
the desk of every missionary should hang 
this motto, "Tell the truth," and under- 
neath might be inscribed, "In this sign, 
conquer." No man faces greater tempta- 
tions to careless statements than a mis- 
sionary. Every subtle suggestion of Jesuit- 
108 



THE HOME CHURCH 

ism comes to bear upon him. His work 
changes rapidly, and what was true yes- 
terday bears a different value to-day. 
The voice of the tempter is heard near at 
hand. Just a little coloring of facts, just 
a little padding of figures, just a little 
liberty with the story would make it so 
much more dramatic. And the cause is 
so needy. And the good story would bring 
more money. It is a terrible strain on a 
literary imagination, and the end would 
somehow justify the means. 

The antidote for this tendency, where it 
exists, is to remember that accuracy is 
essential for that moral soundness on which 
all good morale is founded. When a man 
buys the truth at the price of his life- 
service it behooves him to sell it not, 
even for the prize of a few more special 
gifts for the "greatest opportunity I have 
ever seen." 

Shouting, "O Baal, hear us," has never 
accomplished much with either human or 
pagan objects of petition. The straight- 
forward missionary whose virile spirit de- 
pends on the facts, and who relies upon 
accurate and organized reports of actual 
109 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

conditions, will impress his readers with 
the sound and constructive grasp of his 
program. Sweat and tears are not very 
convincing as compared with accurate sur- 
veys and statesmanlike projects for ad- 
vance. And the home church is beginning 
to require of a missionary that he have an 
adequate knowledge of his field and a 
definite program of procedure. 

Getting the Facts to the Home 
Church 

The matter of getting the facts through 
to the home church is not so simple as 
may appear. Periodicals, speeches, letters, 
pictures, exhibit material all have high 
place. The furlough man is worked to 
capacity. Occasionally some layman visits 
the field with excellent results. The tourist 
visitor, however, is not an unmixed bless- 
ing. Sometimes he comes to pry and 
criticize and returns to scoff and scorn. 
And ever after, "he knows the facts, for 
he was there." In some cases all he saw 
was the views afforded by steamer decks, 
hotel verandas, and car windows. 

More tragic is the case of the critic, en- 
110 



THE HOME CHURCH 

tertained by the missionary at much 
sacrifice in hope of a good impression. 
After the carefully hoarded dainties have 
been brought forth and served liberally in 
hope of winning another _ friend to the 
cause, the visitor has been known to go 
home and report that the missionaries were 
living in luxury on the fat of the land and 
were a worthless lot of parasites anyway. 

Pictures are good (if they are good), but 
even pictures may fail to tell the truth. 
Much depends upon the commentator. 
Pictures are good, but vision is better. 
Pictures never can take the place of per- 
sonality. Hard facts without human char- 
acter in the midst are no better than dry 
bones. 

Every missionary ought to have a good 
camera and mimeograph, but before he 
begins to use them for the instruction of 
his constituency he should be tested for 
accuracy and measured for imagination. 
Marvelous is the power to tell an effective 
story without rubbing in a financial moral 
at the end. The irrational enthusiasm of 
blind optimism must give way to strong, 
constructive, manly statements. 
Ill 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

The field needs men who know them- 
selves, know their work, and know their 
goals and bend all energies to reach them. 

Publicity 

There is a type of publicity that pre- 
supposes that one of the requisites for 
saving all men is to fill enough space in 
the paper. What is printed is a secondary 
matter if only the power of iteration may 
bring the cause again and again before the 
eyes of those who read newspapers. Cer- 
tainly, this art has high value, but, after 
ail, if Jesus Christ had depended on the 
pagan predecessors of modern publicity ex- 
perts, he would have closed his life in 
failure. He got only four inches in a 
column of Josephus, which lacks much of 
representing a first-page head. There are 
forces of the spirit that transcend pub- 
licity. It may be just as well to have 
something to advertise before we begin to 
shout. The first essential to telling a good 
story is to have a story to tell. And when 
the story is found, then let it be told far 
and wide, but for the sake of the cause 
let it be told accurately. 
112 



THE HOME CHURCH 

Emotional Appeals 

Tearful tales on the part of furlough men 
have created a suspicion of the whole en- 
terprise. Isolated feeling is a dangerous 
guide to conduct, and the man in the pew 
knows it. The hearer either swings into 
impulsive and unintelligent response or he 
resents the method of appeal and dis- 
credits the plea. 

What a man feels himself about his work 
will tell its story without conscious effort 
to work up the sensibilities of the audience. 
Nowhere is utter genuineness more needed 
than in a missionary speech. The appeal 
rests back on its genuineness, and this 
kind cometh not forth except by attain- 
ment of the spirit of Him who made him- 
self of no reputation and gave his all that 
he might redeem a very large and difficult 
mission field. 



113 



CHAPTER Xni 

MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION 

Missionary administration has more to 
do with missionary morale than may at 
first appear. The candidate has not so 
much as heard that there be any such 
thing, but the day of his awakening is not 
far distant. There are too many wrecks 
along this shore, and we need some chart 
that will indicate the route of harmonious 
cooperation between the field and the 
office. 

Contact with the Office 

Since the recruit has slight personal con- 
nections with the home church, the ad- 
ministrative office becomes the working 
contact between the missionary and the 
home base. It is here that the worker 
must look for information, direction, sug- 
gestion, and criticism of his work. Here 
the entente cordiale comes to its full sig- 
114 



MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION 

nificance. Friction between the field and 
the office, loss of confidence on either side, 
will reduce the output in extreme cases to 
zero. 

In practice the maintenance of this mu- 
tual confidence is ninety-five per cent a 
matter of personal acquaintance. If the 
men at both ends of a pretty long line 
have had opportunity to know each other, 
nearly all the kinks in the line automati- 
cally disappear. Letters sent half around 
the globe are often strangely affected by 
the sea voyage and sometimes are warped 
by unfamiliar climates — when the senders 
and receivers are not on terms of close 
acquaintance. A remark made in person 
with a smile or a humorous inflection, 
when written minus the smile and the 
tone, may cause an explosion ten thousand 
miles away. It may be said that personal 
misunderstandings with the office or board 
usually increase in direct ratio to the 
square of the distance. 

Long distances in space and time, with 
a rapidly moving program, bring differ- 
ences of viewpoint so rapidly that only 
frequent personal conferences between 
115 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

workers and field executives can prevent 
misunderstandings and disagreements. 
Every missionary should be given some 
opportunity to become acquainted with 
his home office, and every executive ought 
to know something of his field from per- 
sonal visitation and some representative 
missionary experiences. But receptions, 
prepared programs, conferences, and gala 
occasions are not representative expe- 
riences. The general executive who is to 
get in touch with the actual work of the 
missionary will need a sympathetic im- 
agination to get back of the nonconducting 
formalities and exhibits that are offered 
him on the occasion of his visit. 

Four principles of administrative pro- 
cedure appear to be gaining general ac- 
ceptance. 

1. The Unified Command 

At the Edinburgh Conference in 1910 
Dr. John R. Mott said that the complete 
coordination of the missionary forces of 
the world would be equivalent to doubling 
those forces. This statement he reaffirmed 
in 1919 with added emphasis. 
116 



MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION 

A new basis of procedure has come to 
prominence. The old days of "doing the 
best we could" are forever past. Slowly 
but surely we are getting together, not to 
do the best we can with limited means and 
dim visions, but to undertake the whole 
task before us. What centralization of 
command did for the Allies in 1918 the 
same principle is doing for the allied 
churches. Elimination of waste, duplica- 
tion, overlapping, and overcrowding is 
already simplifying our objectives and in- 
creasing our effectiveness. The adoption 
of uniform programs, schedules, methods, 
and objectives, and the uniting of denomi- 
national projects into more far-reaching 
and effective enterprises have changed the 
petty competitions of former days into the 
beginnings of master strategy in missionary 
administration. 

2. The Whole Objective 

On a certain ferry one morning at the 
rush hour two thousand people were 
crowded upon one steamer. An observant 
passenger noticed a lifeboat bearing the 
inscription, "Capacity, 12 people." Look- 
117 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

ing about, lie counted a total of four such 
boats. Evidently, the company had 
counted on saving forty-eight out of a 
possible two thousand people in case of 
accident. 

That is what the church has been doing. 
"The Lord could save the heathen without 
our help," and we read, "Fear not, little 
flock, . . ." and smugly congratulated our- 
selves that since the flock was so small we 
were fortunate to be inside the fold. The 
day is past when any follower of Jesus 
Christ can stop his devotional reading 
after the word "flock" and not catch the 
challenge of the rest of the sentence. We 
are thinking to-day in terms of the King- 
dom. It is proposed definitely and sys- 
tematically to undertake the whole task. 
No wonder that some former methods and 
plans are on the scrap-heap. Some men 
and some missions will "crumple up" under 
the strain, and the Great Cause will gain 
much thereby. 

3. The Specific Task 

To see a goal clearly is to make progress 
toward it. The man who sets out aimlessly 
118 



MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION 

to "serve the Lord" will never form a 
definite program, and will not know what 
to do with one when offered him. The 
whole church is thinking in terms of survey 
and responsibility and cooperation and 
definite objectives. A new heavens and a 
new earth are before us. It is possible to 
work along for years in a mission with no 
very clear idea as to what is being at- 
tempted and with no very definite results. 
It is easy to follow a conventional routine, 
but not very profitable. To such a situa- 
tion the coming of a definite objective has 
brought new vitality and energy and the 
little flock has for the first time caught a 
glimpse of its coming Kingdom. There is 
a larger and better way than doing the 
best one can and breathing a thankful sigh 
that it is no worse. 

Interdenominational comity is not an 
exact science, but it is something better: 
it is a flexible working principle. Pro- 
verbially futile are doctrinal disputes and 
quibbles about methods of baptism in 
lands where people degrade womanhood 
and worship cows. The native is not 
without discernment. He does make a 
119 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

distinction. In West China, for instance, 
he is said to discriminate between the 
'Big Wash Folks" and the "Little Wash 
Folks" and the "Don't Wash at all Folks." 
When the case is stated that way there is 
little to be said by mere Baptists and 
Methodists and Friends. 

4. The Standardized Organization 

One of the major embarrassments of 
missionary administration, and one of the 
most distressing leaks in efficiency, is the 
irresponsible, detached, independent "mis- 
sionary" who declines to recognize or co- 
operate with any reputable agency in the 
field or at home. The fact that such people 
are usually of good moral character and 
possess good motives does not save their 
activities from serious interference with 
larger programs. That they endure occa- 
sional hardships incident to their defective 
basis of support does not prevent them 
from sowing discord and strife on the field. 
Calling them "faith" missionaries does not 
avoid vast confusion in the minds of unin- 
structed natives and a general tearing down 
as fast as others can build up. These er- 
120 



MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION 

ratic prophets go about leaving discord 
behind them and discrediting all valid 
missionary work in the eyes of sensible 
people who come to know them and their 
ways. Some of the antagonism to mis- 
sionaries found on ocean steamers has 
been stimulated by the fanatical manner- 
isms of people who have made themselves 
nuisances en route. It is not always ex- 
pedient to extemporize a rescue mission on 
a steamer deck. 

Most of these disturbers claim to be 
"faith missionaries" — whatever that 
abused term may mean. In most cases 
as used by them it means that they have 
no visible means of support. Frequently 
they represent detached and peculiar 
creeds, often weird and irrational in the 
extreme. They emphasize differences 
rather than agreements, friction rather 
than fraternity, and sometimes they set- 
tle down beside established missions and 
promulgate their "advanced" teachings 
among the disturbed members of the na- 
tive church. 

The problem of the missionary's rela- 
tions with these irresponsibles is a difficult 
121 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

one and requires much grace and tact. As 
interchurch comity grows apace the gulf 
of difference between these wandering 
stars and the more fixed denominational 
constellations will widen. No way has 
been devised of dissuading any man who 
thinks he is called from starting out at 
random to be a miniature Paul. So long 
as a few friends send occasional dollars he 
will struggle along. Such men must be 
treated with personal kindness. Anything 
like opposition pours oil on the troubled 
flames. The missionary will need all the 
poise and patience he can possess. 

As the effort to Christianize the world 
proceeds apace it becomes increasingly evi- 
dent that really effective work is to be 
done largely through the regular denomi- 
national boards which have strong home 
constituencies and which are directed by 
trained and experienced administrators. If 
missions are a matter of faith, the whole 
church should share the grace. The ro- 
mance of the independent "faith mission" 
too often proves but an illusion from which 
come no lasting results. On the steerage 
of a trans-oceanic steamer an earnest man 
122 



MISSIONARY ADMINISTRATION 

and his wife were traveling to the Orient. 
Between exhortations to their fellow pas- 
sengers, most of whom could understand 
but little of the English language used, 
these self-appointed missionaries explained 
that they had received a miraculous gift of 
"tongues" and were going to a country 
where they could at once begin missionary 
work with the natives. Some friend had 
provided passage money and they would 
trust the Lord for all else. No comment is 
needed, but in some such cases the devotee 
has been saved from starvation only by the 
help of the regular denominational mis- 
sionary who shared what he had with the 
stranded fanatics. One such leader gath- 
ered a band of men and took them to 
Africa "by faith," but without funds, food, 
or medicine. They would trust the Lord 
for all. Most of the unfortunates died 
within a year, and the returning leader 
proclaimed that it was all for the glory of 
God, and has since published a series of 
pamphlets "exposing" the iniquities of de- 
nominational missionary work. Such a case 
is extreme, but indicates what may be ex- 
pected when fanaticism has run its course. 
123 



CHAPTER XIV 

THE MISSION FAMILY 

Nowhere is the personal equation 
stronger than on the mission field. Every 
individual idiosyncrasy and peculiarity is 
multiplied as many times as there are 
members of the family. 

Living in Close Quarters 

When one wearies of his friends in New 
York he can readily escape for a time. 
There are plenty of other people, and most 
of the personal strains of life relax if we 
can merely get out of sight of each other 
for a few hours per day, and occasionally 
for a few days at a time. 

The missionary has little opportunity 
for such relief. Two teachers living to- 
gether in the same house, teaching in the 
same school, eating at the same table 
three times a day, spending almost every 
waking hour in each other's company, 
with not another kindred soul within a 
124 



THE MISSION FAMILY 

day's journey, have a strain to meet that 
few people in the homeland can appreciate 
or understand. In one such case a veteran 
and a novice were paired off in an isolated 
location. Incompatibility of temperament 
developed until something near insanity 
compelled a readjustment, which at once 
cured the case. 

If missionary morale is to be anything 
more than a name, there must be a way 
to adjust the personal relations of a mis- 
sion family. The candidate faces no more 
important issue than that of making effec- 
tive personal contacts. 

The system of housing all mission work- 
ers in a compound had its value under 
early conditions. But with assured safety 
more stress is being placed on the principle 
of scattering workers about where they 
may become acquainted with the neighbors 
and their personal influence may be multi- 
plied. If missionaries could see less of 
each other, many of the personal prob- 
lems would be solved. 

Whatever the living conditions, mission- 
aries must get along with each other or 
the tongues of the best of them may make 
125 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

a noise like sounding brass or jarring 
wrangle. And worse than audible dis- 
suasion is that profane silence that breaks 
the spirit of fellowship. 

It does not relieve the situation to claim 
that some people are sensitive. Of course 
they are. All fine souls are sensitive. But 
sensitiveness of the sort that causes its 
possessor to mope about with wounded 
feelings is the mark of a small mind and 
the sign of selfishness. 

The new missionary needs the close 
friendship of a veteran during the years of 
his novitiate. If he comes to the field 
with the idea that he represents the latest 
product of the wisdom of the home church 
and should enlighten the weary workers 
long on the field, it becomes a blessing 
that for a year or two he is perforce dumb. 
By the time he can express his thoughts 
in a foreign language he may have ac- 
quired some conception of the issues in- 
volved in Christianizing the lives of the 
natives. 

A Missionary's Recreation 

"No play, no missionary," might be 
126 



THE MISSION FAMILY 

adopted as a good working motto. Some 
sort of relaxation is indispensable. And 
play is a social affair. Jungle-tramping 
may be a solo performance, but it is much 
more profitable with a party. Tennis is 
justly famed as a missionary pastime. Ath- 
letics of all sorts are valuable, but those 
that involve a social element rank highest 
in the scale. Photography is a valuable 
aid to mission work. Whatever be the 
hobby, a man or a woman simply must 
have some way of getting his mind out of 
the deepening grooves and giving his soul 
a little air now and then. Like his devo- 
tions, his recreational life will accomplish 
most when linked with some general scheme 
of the day's business. There are ultra- 
serious people who have no time for play, 
but they are not the best missionaries nor 
the easiest to get along with. The gospel 
records supply a valuable text in the mat- 
ter of balancing interests and maintaining 
a normal and sane personal attitude to- 
ward work and play. 

Readjusting Social Standards 

Social readjustments are among the diffi- 
127 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

culties of a missionary's life. The novice 
meets a new set of sanctions at wide 
variance with his own, and needs much 
time even to understand the often com- 
plicated customs of his people. To conform 
to these arbitrary and often disagreeable 
regulations involves much sacrifice. He 
did not leave his homeland to conform to 
irritating nonessentials. At this turn of 
the road have occurred many wrecks. 
Where missionaries have not been able or 
willing to change their ways to conform to 
strange customs they have often failed to 
attain personal influence with the natives. 

No one suggests that moral compromises 
be made, but in matters purely social and 
incidental there is but one thing to do. 
If the natives eat with hats on, then when 
the missionary eats with them let him re- 
tain his hat. If one is to live in Rome for 
the sake of making Rome and the Romans 
better, then as far as possible let him be- 
come a Roman. 

Social customs and associations vary 

widely in different countries. American 

social customs presuppose high standards 

of moral life and conduct on the part of 

128 



THE MISSION FAMILY 

young men and young women. Other 
countries have found such freedom of so- 
cial life unsafe, and in defense of daughters 
have established a system of rigid over- 
sight. In such cases, where missionaries 
are involved, there must be unhesitating 
conformity to native standards. The 
presence of an American colony near a 
foreign mission may become a veritable 
snare, especially if the mission include 
some young unmarried women and the 
colony some lonely bachelors. No young 
man or woman should set forth for a mis- 
sion field until this matter is well under- 
stood, and its implications cheerfully ac- 
cepted. 

Contract Teachers 

The employment of contract teachers has 
sometimes proved a mixed blessing for two 
reasons. Some contract teachers disclaim 
any high missionary motive other than a 
desire to do their work as well as possible 
in the schoolroom. The contract worker, 
being engaged for a limited period only, is 
in more or less of a transient relation and 
cannot acquire the attitude of whole- 
129 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

hearted devotement that comes to the 
missionary who follows a life calling. The 
contract teacher is frequently a real mis- 
sionary at heart and renders highly effec- 
tive service. Other contract teachers fail 
to realize the need of social conformity to 
the standards required of mission workers. 
These are exceptions, however, and some 
very high and valuable service is rendered 
by these teachers. 

Unmarried Women 

Young and unmarried women raise a 
missionary problem because of the divine 
right of every woman, especially if young 
and attractive, to marry. All efforts to set 
a time limit to matrimony, and impose 
penalties for breaking over too soon, have 
resulted in little but complications and re- 
adjustments. There is, and should be, no 
antidote for the great feminine reservation, 
but it does play the mischief with a mission 
at times. The very isolation and loneliness 
of the situation make matrimony doubly 
attractive. If there is but one man in 
reach, it seems too bad to lose the chance. 
All of this applies equally to the unmarried 
130 " 



THE MISSION FAMILY 

man, with the universal difference that 
marriage ties a man tightly to his work, 
but pries a woman loose and destroys her 
value as a single woman. As a married 
woman she may remain a valuable member 
of the staff, but she cannot do what she 
would have done as a single missionary. 

A Working Sense of Humor 

Much has been said elsewhere about the 
need of a working sense of humor. In the 
mission family the urgent need of this be- 
comes vividly apparent. It is doubtful 
whether any set of people can get along 
together successfully without an ameliorat- 
ing capacity for some fun. While such a 
sixth sense may be cultivated, exhortation 
will not produce it. Let not the inex- 
perienced tyro set forth into the unknown 
without a good joke-appreciator in his per- 
sonal traveling outfit. 

Social Graces 

The missionary needs social adaptability 

as much as a government diplomat. Too 

often have social impossibles supposed that 

in missionary work they could escape from 

131 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

the strain of social functions where they 
could think of nothing to say and therefore 
sat helpless and abashed along the prover- 
bial "wall." The mission field is no place 
for that blank look of helplessness that 
marks the hermit when trapped in a social 
situation. Unless the presence of people 
proves a reliable stimulus to one's social 
faculties it is useless to try to work with 
gracious and cultivated men and women. 
For the degree and kind of influence the 
missionary develops will depend much upon 
his social contacts. 

Between missionaries often have arisen 
some of the finest friendships on earth. 
Of Davids and Jonathans there have been 
many, and of Damon and Pythias there 
have been numerous examples. The fellow- 
ship of the worth-while task is the finest 
flavored on earth. The veterans talk most 
happily of the years of toil and struggle 
and adventure. 

The Wider Fellowships 

Out beyond the fellowships of the im- 
mediate mission stretches an innumerable 
company of saints, prophets, priests, and 
132 



THE MISSION FAMILY 

kings, martyrs, heroes, explorers, and foun- 
dation-layers of the kingdom of God in all 
ages. It is no small experience to see the 
mountainside covered with horses and 
chariots of fire. He to whom comes the 
vision shows a new morale. To know that 
the countless hosts of the ages are working 
with us and for us is a great strengthener 
of resolution and a mighty stabilizer of 
conduct when under strain. 

One man may chase a thousand, but 
two men can overcome ten thousand. The 
social sense of comradeship multiplies a 
man by five. The spirit of the company, 
the fellowship of the meeting, the kinship 
of the denomination, the sense of keeping 
step with the saints, living or dead, sus- 
tains many a weary worker who would 
otherwise fall by the way. The cultiva- 
tion of a personal acquaintance with the 
innumerable company is a great builder of 
fighting morale. 

There is a comfortable sense of brother- 
hood with other missionaries. Everywhere 
they are toiling on, over the deserts and up 
the steep places and sometimes through 
dismal swamps. Occasionally they emerge 
133 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

on the heights and catch glimpses of each 
other's faces against the glory of the new 
heavens, and with a shout and a cheer 
they go on with their work. The world 
may separate kindred spirits, but the 
world is a small and shrinking place, and 
here and there the climbers and lifters 
meet together and with gladness of heart 
recount their toils and triumphs and go on 
their way again. 

Missionaries are not much given to ex- 
pression of sentiment or display of emo- 
tions. Families are broken up and scat- 
tered never to meet again as parents and 
children. Wives and husbands are parted 
for months and years. All family ties are 
stretched to the utmost. But not many 
tears are shed, at least not many in public. 
Partings for years are passed with smiles 
and cheers. It is the glory of the invisible, 
the morale of the missionary. The high 
principles that we live for demand our 
utmost best, and, after all, in our personal 
relations we register our mark of efficiency 
on the scale of service. 



134 



CHAPTER XV 

PUBLIC SERVICE 

If a missionary is anything more than a 
recluse or the private chaplain of a select 
few, he will meet public officials and will 
become a factor in public affairs. Such is 
the inevitable result of a strong personality 
dealing with human values. 

A Missionary's Influence 

Almost any kind of ability will get a 
chance somewhere. Many a missionary 
has proven to be the saving grace of inter- 
national complications and the composer 
of internecine quarrels. Men with tact and 
sense always will find their way into posi- 
tions of influence where they will have 
ample opportunity to exercise such gifts as 
they may possess. 

Dr. Lyman Abbott says that when he 

was a young man his father gave him this 

bit of pertinent advice: "First get your 

influence, then use it." It might be 

135 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

written on the flyleaf of every missionary's 
Bible. 

The man who is tempted to play his 
piece de resistance the first month of his 
work needs the Abbott motto. Influence 
is a matter of acquaintance and doing 
something in the present tense. Former 
records are useful to the man himself but 
worthless with his constituency. The less 
said about them the better. Certainly, a 
humble and a contrite spirit is the be- 
ginning of effective personal contacts. 
The strongest friendships take time to 
ripen, and any self-exaltation breaks the 
contact. Nowhere is a superb spirit more 
needed than in dealing with native leaders 
of public affairs. 

An ambitious recruit began his mission- 
ary career by informing his veteran fellow 
workers of their mistakes. In his interior 
province he called on the governor and 
offered to advise him as to the best method 
of conducting the affairs of his office. The 
governor remembered an engagement and 
excused himself. In his own congregation 
the militant missionary showed a Bible in 
one hand and a gun in the other, and an- 
136 



PUBLIC SERVICE 

noimced that, in general terms, if they did 
not receive the Book, they knew what to 
expect next. A few months later the "mis- 
sionary" was back in his home country 
bewailing the stupidity of the natives. 

Reform measures led by missionaries are 
at best temporary expedients. Not until 
leadership is raised up from within can 
any people make very permanent progress 
in improvements of vice conditions and so- 
cial situations. The effective missionary 
keeps himself in the background and di- 
rects with the unseen hand while native 
leaders do the shouting and direct the 
campaign. Anti-opium crusades by the 
score have been inspired by missionaries, 
but the poppies were dug out by native 
hands. Cigarettes were barred from a 
great province in China, but the mass 
meetings were addressed by both natives 
and foreigners, and the actual work of the 
campaign was done by Chinese. Opium 
was kept out of the Philippines by the 
dramatic work of one strong missionary 
who threw his whole soul into a protest 
that was availing. A farm colony in one 
mission was established by a missionary 
137 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

who secured the cooperation of native 
officials and capitalists and guaranteed the 
success of the work. In another country 
missionaries diplomatically suggested 
needed changes in children's clothing that 
were immediately adopted. 'Temperance 
instruction in many lands is still confined 
to mission schools, but in some countries 
the influence of these schools has been 
sufficient to cause similar instruction to be 
introduced into public schools. Medical 
missionaries have exerted influence far be- 
yond all computation by their personal 
access to the homes and hearts of influen- 
tial people. Women have found their way 
into thousands of places closed to men, 
and there have wrought mighty things 
with the wives and mothers and daughters 
of leading men. So great has been the per- 
sonal influence of missionaries with savage 
chiefs that we almost have developed a tra- 
dition covering such cases. One missionary 
leader is credited with having done much 
to forestall a great war in the Orient. 

Letting in the Light 

It is not often that the flash-light method 
138 



PUBLIC SERVICE 

accomplishes much toward the bringing of 
a new day. With the establishment of a 
comprehensive Christian program and its 
illustration through a group of people 
whose hearts God has touched, the native 
mind slowly begins to work in new direc- 
tions. As better methods become ap- 
parent, dissatisfaction with the old order 
arises and reforms germinate in the mind. 
Here arises opportunity for skillful leader- 
ship of moral forces and stimulated per- 
sonalities. If the body is the temple of 
the Holy Spirit, then any deforming or 
defiling of the body becomes sacrilege. 
Suddenly a whole train of supposedly 
harmless practices emerges as highly repre- 
hensible. Drunkenness, licentiousness, 
foot-binding, filth, and gluttony become 
matters of new concern, to be eliminated 
by new forces. 

The Missionary Not a Propagandist 

The missionary who goes forth with the 
intention of becoming a professional pro- 
moter of reform campaigns on the lines 
on which such movements are conducted 
in the United States needs to study the 
139 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

pathway by which the older civilization 
has reached the point where such propa- 
ganda is possible. He may also remember 
that such campaigns in the United States 
are not conducted by foreigners, but by 
citizens of North America. The day of 
sweeping reform is near at hand in nearly 
every land, but the leadership of such ad- 
vances will be largely native. 

Dealing with Governments 

Nowhere does the spirit of a man count 
for more than in his personal relations with 
officials of the government under which he 
works. Good judgment, pleasing person- 
ality, understanding and exercise of native 
standards of courtesy, sympathetic appre- 
ciation of the native viewpoint and recog- 
nition of national ideals, knowledge of 
national history and traditions, and an 
attitude of willingness to learn from those 
with whom he associates are all indis- 
pensable for the missionary, who must also 
be a diplomat at large. 

This does not mean that the missionary 
is to inject himself into governmental 
affairs. In all matters political the one 
140 



PUBLIC SERVICE 

rule is that of neutrality. Parties, policies, 
administrations, legislation, and revolu- 
tions may come and go, but the missionary 
and his work stay on. One unfortunate 
alignment of the mission with the wrong 
party, and the cause may be lost. For the 
missionary there are no parties, but there 
are always individual officials with whom 
he should maintain personal relations to 
the advantage of his work and often to 
the benefit of the officials. 

There are few governments in any coun- 
try to-day that are officially hostile to the 
work of the Christian missionary. Per- 
sonal antagonisms must be dealt with on a 
personal basis. The educational, medical, 
and industrial work of the mission has 
won universal favor. 

The maintenance of satisfactory personal 
relations with government officials be- 
comes a missionary's business as much as 
teaching or touring. A thousand favors 
are granted by these officials, and their 
friendliness has been of inestimable value 
to missionaries everywhere. As experience 
widens, the missionary marvels at the 
generous treatment that he often receives 
141 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

from men who have small personal sym- 
pathy with his religion, but who believe in 
him and in the practical results of his 
work. And the value of such contacts de- 
pends largely upon that unmeasured some- 
thing about a man that constitutes his 
"personality." 

If the missionary is to succeed in this 
matter, he must learn the rules of the court, 
or office, or executive mansion, and abide 
by them. Formal calls must be made, and 
they must be made so as not to offend the 
standards and tastes of men to whom these 
matters are vital. There are a standard of 
etiquette and a conformity to convention 
that are essential to success. Clothes and 
hours and introductions and formalities — 
let them all be learned and followed; but 
back of the dress suit and the engraved card 
and the advantageous introduction and 
the punctilious observance is, after all, the 
man himself. Without force of character 
and effective morale all these externals will 
go for naught. 



142 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE MISSIONARY AND HIS 
MISSION 

It is not to be expected that the morale 
of the training camp will be sufficient for 
the strains of the field. After the candi- 
date has been trained and tested and in- 
structed and exhorted and farewelled, his 
real trial is yet to come. He is at this 
point high-grade raw material, and the 
final product is still a matter of some 
uncertainty. 

Meeting the Constituency 

The impact of a missionary's constit- 
uency does more for and to him than 
anything else. Between the exalted en- 
thusiasm of big conventions and heroic 
farewells and the dull inertia of the un- 
interested "heathen" there is an awful 
contrast. When the worker has to face 
the fanatical onslaughts of Mohammedan 
or Jesuit communities the case is harder 
still. With entirely benevolent intentions 
143 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

the herald of light goes forth to find that 
the heathen does not want to be illumi- 
nated; in fact, he often resents it bitterly. 
And it sometimes happens that as soon as 
he can see to walk he sets out on inde- 
pendent trails and causes no end of con- 
cern to his spiritual guides. 

The comparative age of a mission may 
be tested by the relations between a 
missionary and his people. In the early 
years the foreigner does nearly everything. 
Later he trains "native helpers," who be- 
come his pride — and sometimes his con- 
sternation. As the work grows these help- 
ers grow in wisdom and experience, and 
often before the missionary is well aware 
of it he has become a "foreign helper" to 
the native leaders. 

The readjustments incident to this third 
stage are not always painless. There are 
missionaries who have the same difficulties 
at this point that parents meet when their 
children come to face them on a level, 
instead of looking up for guidance. The 
day must finally come in every successful 
mission when the native takes over bur- 
dens and responsibilities and the foreigner 
144 



MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION 

becomes a specialist set to certain tasks to 
which he is adapted. 

The Pioneer 

The typical missionary has a penchant 
for the frontier. A pack-mule and an un- 
known trail always challenge him to push 
on. He has an ingrained propensity to 
explore and found and initiate and or- 
ganize. Since Abram went out, not know- 
ing whither he went, a host of others have 
followed in his steps to become members 
of the glorious caravan of moral and spirit- 
ual pioneers, moving in dramatic pageant 
across the deserts of life, producing oases 
at every night's encampment. The mis- 
sionary is the man of the frontier who 
resolutely faces society's desert edge and 
stands against the deadly drifts that would 
sweep over civilization and destroy its 
fruits and flowers. 

The background of a missionary's call 
always includes a sense of desperate need 
on the part of those to whom he goes and 
the infinite value of the remedy offered. 
The need possibly may be conceived in 
theological terms, and the remedy may be 
145 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

thought to be the adoption of a ritual or 
performance of a rite, but the essential 
process is the same. When the need is 
understood in terms of stunted and dwarfed 
personalities destitute of the more abun- 
dant life which can expand the shriveled 
souls and drive back the whole encroaching 
horizon that crowds in on every side, then 
the divine commission rises to the eternal 
dignity and infinite worth of a heavenly 
calling. 

The point of contact with this degrada- 
tion in practice may be some particular 
rite or barbarism or superstition, particu- 
larly offensive to Christian standards. 
Something like the hatred of the trench 
soldier for the abominable practices of his 
enemy may arise in the missionary's heart 
when he "makes contact" with the various 
objectionable features of his community. 
A real horror of heathenism may play a 
vital part in the equipment of energies 
with which a man goes about his work in a 
strange land. 

Flowers in the Desert 

In this human desert, with patient culti- 
146 



MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION 

vation, some flowers will appear, and with 
them the missionary will start his oasis. 
It must be individual attention and in- 
tensive cultivation, but the garden will 
grow. The human material is at hand in 
raw state. To make these bones live there 
must come the heavenly breath of spiritual 
vitality, and it comes through the heart 
of the missionary. 

Perhaps the "bones" to be clothed may 
be found near at hand. Friendship may 
be clothed with spiritual possibilities of 
high order. There are always native cus- 
toms, innocent and socially useful, that 
may be clothed with new significance. 
Established observances can be turned to 
good account. There are occasional con- 
trasts between the acknowledged barbar- 
isms and the obviously better ways of the 
Christian faith. In moments of life's 
climaxes, births, weddings, deaths, and 
accidents these contrasts stand out viv- 
idly. Here and there native believers 
begin to develop definite spiritual expe- 
riences, and these become wells of water 
from which the thirsty missionary and the 
young church may refresh their weary 
147 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

spirits. There is a growing fellowship in 
the new household of faith that binds 
strong ties about those who enter the little 
circle of believers who gather, first be- 
cause they like the leader, and then be- 
cause they find personal help, and last 
because they too are impelled to serve. 

From such materials is builded the mo- 
rale of the native church. To develop the 
spiritual life and enlarge the moral vision 
of a company of believers is one of the 
highest privileges that life holds for any 
worker. 

The Margin of Reticence 

Whatever of horror a man may feel 
about the objectionable features of his 
surroundings, he must learn to keep to 
himself. Inwardly conscious of a su- 
periority over his community, he must live 
on the common ground that always exists 
somewhere in every social situation. No 
man and no cause can live on points of 
superiority over the neighbors. There are 
sound and sane fundamentals of human 
life and experience to which we must all 
come as a basis of building. These funda- 
148 



MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION 

mentals exist in all people, even if buried 
under hoary and sometimes barbarous cus- 
toms. To find and uncover and develop 
and build upon these foundations is a mis- 
sionary's high calling. 

The Personal Touch 

Through these fundamentals the mis- 
sionary will find that personal touch upon 
which everything else depends. It took 
twenty-two years for Dan Crawford to 
produce Thinking Black. Until a man can 
think in any color that matches his sur- 
roundings he has not found the key to his 
constituency. A veteran missionary uni- 
versity president stood looking over his 
campus. "These people are just as brainy 
as we are," he remarked. And the sooner 
we find it out the better. 

The personal touch is easier to discuss 
than to acquire, but given a fundamental 
liking for folks, it is always possible, even 
with a faulty language approach. The 
new missionary can accomplish wonders 
by "sitting in a rocking chair" in the 
house of his friend. Just to hang about 
and show a real personal interest means 
149 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

much. American brusqueness and bustle 
are hindrances to progress in personal ac- 
quaintance, but we can afford to learn 
from our pupils in this respect. 

Language Problems 

Language problems belong properly to 
the field of labor, yet much time might be 
saved if all candidates could be given a 
couple of years of language training pre- 
vious to being sent out for work. South 
American missionaries usually have been 
given a heavy handicap in being required 
to begin at once to teach English, and 
leave the matter of language study to in- 
cidental hours. The unfortunate result is 
that years afterward the worker is handi- 
capped by his faulty command of the 
vernacular. A year devoted to language 
work would release many a linguistic crip- 
ple from his crutches. The only way yet 
devised to get effective command of a 
language is to learn it. And, obviously, 
when a man is careless and slipshod in 
the use of his mother tongue he is not 
apt to shine as a linguist in his adopted 
country. 

150 



MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION 

Native Fellowships 

One of the greatest compensations that 
come to the missionary lies in personal 
fellowships with his people. The very dif- 
ference of national character and personal 
viewpoint supplies a flavor and interest and 
variety that make such friendships sources 
of never-failing enjoyment and surprise. 
The unexpected has its high charm, and 
there is plenty of it. In spite of difference 
in color and speech there arise warm friend- 
ships that enrich all experience. Where is 
the missionary who has not parted, heavy- 
hearted, from a circle of weeping followers? 
He may have been merely going for a fur- 
lough, but to them it was a long, long 
break in their lives. It is high reward to 
know that even an imperfect investment 
of life has produced a permanent impres- 
sion for good in lives that otherwise would 
never have been touched. There are no 
rewards in life so priceless as the reactions 
that come back to us from the hearts that 
we have helped along the way. Some- 
times the native shows a sense of gratitude 
all out of proportion to what he has ac- 
151 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

tually received. Sometimes he seems ir- 
responsive and unappreciative, but, after 
all, the pathetic gratitude of racial chil- 
dren gets a tense hold on the heart-strings 
of the missionary. 

The Art of Command 

Command is a difficult art for Americans; 
we are too democratic and independent for 
the part. The missionary who goes forth 
with the idea that he is to take charge and 
give orders is scheduled for disaster. The 
missionary must in some way blend com- 
radeship and control, which is never easy. 
The position of any leader is an exposed 
position, inviting criticism and sometimes 
ridicule. Dignity is not solemnity, nor are 
pomposity and severity the measure of au- 
thority. Dignity is essentially a sense of 
values. It may be very simple and say 
little. The native church gets its cue un- 
consciously from the unexpressed value- 
standards of its leaders. The specialist in 
American informality has much to learn 
before he can become an effective leader of 
natives in any mission field. No position 
in the world requires a nicer balance of 
152 



MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION 

qualities than that of leading, command- 
ing, teaching, and chumming, all at one 
time, with one's constituency. 

Living as the Natives 

To reach native lives it does not follow 
that one must live in all things as they do. 
In fact, the natives do not live very suc- 
cessfully, and the missionary will not live 
at all if he tries to subsist on wretched food 
amid squalor and filth to which he is a 
natural stranger. An American cannot live 
as the bushmen in Africa live, nor as the 
outcastes of India live, nor as the coolies 
of China live. If anyone thinks he can 
do so, let him set up a model in a nearby 
vacant lot and try it awhile at home. 

There is no reason why the missionary 
should not maintain his home in cleanness 
and decency. In fact, if he does try to 
live like the natives, they will usually 
mark him down as a failure in his own land 
who had to come to them and who is no 
better than themselves. And the church 
that sends out the missionary has no right 
to provide its families and pastors with 
comforts and luxuries of life and ask its 
153 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

missionaries to live below the level of 
domestic pets at home. The experiment 
has been made with disastrous results. As 
to the charge that the mission houses are 
better than those of the natives, it may 
be said that they are rarely ever equipped 
with even the simple sanitary conveniences 
incident to the home of a day laborer in 
the United States. 

Back of these externals it is to be said 
that it is not the missionary's house that 
determines his success or failure. It is the 
missionary's spirit. If he manifests the 
mind that was in Christ, he will find in 
every place hearts that will respond, and 
externals will find their level. 

Native Religions 

The contact with a native religion is a 
difficult problem for a missionary. That 
there is something good in every man's 
religion, to be sought out and made a 
starting-point for the clearer vision, needs 
no emphasis. But in practice the study of 
comparative religions in a college library is 
a very different matter from settling down 
amid people who practice the ethics or 
154 



MISSIONARY AND HIS MISSION 

nonethics resulting from one of these in- 
teresting faiths of the world. 

Nevertheless, the only key to the inner- 
most chamber of a man's life is his reli- 
gion. Unless we unlock that long-closed 
door we may declaim and decry for years 
with no result. That the native never 
lives up to the best in his own religion is 
not pertinent — neither does the Christian. 

Loving the People 

It comes at last to this: A missionary 
can work wonders with people, provided 
he really likes them. Given a genuine 
love for folks, the most fastidious woman 
may be reconciled to a life among the 
zenanas or in ministry to Chinese woman- 
hood in the wretched village hovels of the 
interior. Let him who cannot acquire a 
real love for the people about him sadly 
turn back. Love bears all, believes all, 
hopes all, endures all, lives in all manner 
of conditions, toils on helping many, sav- 
ing some, showing forth the Master until 
his coming again. 

How small a missionary is amid his re- 
sponsibilities none realizes better than him- 
155 



MISSIONARY MORALE 

self. But every act of God's man is multi- 
plied by the forces that work through him. 
His small tracing on the plan of immediate 
action is enlarged and projected in the 
national, social, and domestic life of the 
people. It requires an empowered man to 
become the saving grace among ten thou- 
sand. 

The Victory of Morale 

"Morale wins, not by itself, but by turn- 
ing scales, developing resources, assembling 
forces," says Professor Hocking. Here the 
morale of the missionary registers its final 
triumph. Greater than a striking person- 
ality, greater than dramatic narrative, 
greater than spectacular plans and pro- 
jects, greater than tireless toil, greater than 
any other factor in a missionary's life is his 
final ability to "turn scales, develop re- 
sources, assemble forces," and to bring 
about a new and original reincarnation of 
the kingdom of God on earth. 



156 



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